Jorge,
On Wed, 17 Aug 2005, Jorge Izquierdo (UAM) wrote:
> Hi everybody, I'm new in the list so I apologize if the mail is not so
> clear as it should be.
>
> I'm having some troubles with SL4.0 trying to configure a filesystems of
> 5TB in my SCSI storage (Promise vtrack 15110).
> When the system starts, the output messages shows that my SCSI device is
> correctly detected and the information about the size of the RAID
> storage created is right:
>
> scsi0 : Adaptec AIC79XX PCI-X SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 1.3.11
> <Adaptec 39320A Ultra320 SCSI adapter>
> aic7902: Ultra320 Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, PCI-X 67-100Mhz,
> 512 SCBs
>
> (scsi0:A:0): 160.000MB/s transfers (80.000MHz DT, 16bit)
> Vendor: Promise Model: 14 Disk RAID5 Rev: V0.0
> Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 04
> scsi0:A:0:0: Tagged Queuing enabled. Depth 4
> SCSI device sda: 2532706176 2048-byte hdwr sectors (5186982 MB)
> SCSI device sda: drive cache: write through
> sda: sda1 sda2
> Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
>
> (as you can see, I'm using the Adaptec 39320A HBA with the driver
> aic79xx included with SL)
>
> But the problems come when I try to configure my storage with fdisk and
> then I try to create the ext3 filesystem with mke2fs. First of all,
> fdisk doesn't allow me to create a unique partition with the full
> capacity of my disk array, but when I select a partition size larger
> than 4TB it doesn't work properly. Is this normal? It seems the 64 bits
> support is not reflected at the time of partition creation.
>
> So I decided to create 2 partitions (sda1 and sda2 as reflected in the
> dmesg text) one of 4 TB and the other one with the rest. And here comes
> the second problem, I create a ext3 FS on the sda partition with: mke2fs
> -j -m 0 -b 4096 /dev/sda1
> And when I mount my new filesystem and I test the mounted filesystems I
> get the next information:
> $# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
> $# df -h /mnt
> Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sda1 2.0T 103M 2.0T 1% /mnt
>
> So the size of my partition is only 2TB when I created a 4TB partition
> with fdisk. Any ideas about this behaviour? Should I create my
> filesystem in any other way to support larger than 2TB sizes? Is the 64
> bits support broken anywhere with SL 4.0? Am I missing something?
From the Upstream Vendor Update 1 release notes. I realize that you are
on 4.0 and not 4.1 but the info here is of importance. Note that if you
have the latest errata kernel you have the kernel from 4.1 .
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
o Scientific Linux 4.1 provides support for disk devices
that are larger than 2 terabytes (TB). Although there is limited
support for this feature in the Scientific Linux 4.0 release,
4.1 contains many improvements (both in user space programs and
in the kernel). In general, 4.1 is considered a requirement for
support of disk devices larger than 2 TB.
Please note the following guidelines and restrictions related to large
device support:
. Typical disk devices are addressed in units of 512 byte blocks. The
size of the address in the SCSI command determines the maximum device
size. The SCSI command set includes commands that have 16-bit block
addresses (device size is limited to 2 GB), 32-bit block addresses
(limited to addressing 2 TB), and 64-bit block addresses. The SCSI
subsystem in the 2.6 kernel has support for commands with 64-bit block
addresses. To support disks larger then 2 TB, the Host Bus Adapter
(HBA), the HBA driver, and the storage device must also support 64-bit
block address. We have tested the QLogic qla2300 driver and the
Emulex lpfc driver, included in Scientific Linux 4.1,
on an 8 TB logical unit on a Winchester Systems FX400 (rev. 3.42B and
above is required).
. The commonly-used MS-DOS partition table format can not be used on
devices larger than 2 TB. For devices larger than 2 TB, the GPT
partition table format must be used. The parted utility must be used
for the creation and management of GPT partitions. To create a GPT
partition, use the parted command mklabel gpt.
Scientific Linux requires that all block devices be initialized with a valid
partition table, even if there is a single partition encompassing the
entire device. This requirement exists to prevent potential problems
caused by erroneous or unintended partition tables on the device.
. The / and /boot directories must be located on devices that are 2 TB
in size or less.
. Various issues with LVM2 on large devices are fixed in
Scientific Linux 4.1. Do not use LVM2 on devices larger than 2
TB prior to installing 4.1.
As noted above, Scientific Linux requires that a partition table be written to
the block device, even when it is used as part of an LVM2 Volume
Group. In this case, you may create a single partition that spans the
entire device. Then, be sure to specify the full partition name (for
example, /dev/sda1, not /dev/sda), when you use the pvcreate and
vgcreate commands.
. The maximum size disk that can be a member of an md software RAID
set is 2 TB. The md RAID device itself can be larger than 2 TB.
Devices have been tested up to 8 TB.
. Various issues with e2fsprogs that occur on devices larger than 4 TB
are addressed in Scientific Linux 4.1. Prior to 4.1,
these issues can be worked around by specifying mke2fs -b 4096 when
making an ext2 or ext3 filesystem. The workaround is not necessary in
4.1.
The ext2 and ext3 filesystems have an internal limit of 8 TB. Devices
up to this limit have been tested.
You may want to use the mke2fs -T largefile4 command to speed up the
creation of large filesystems.
. The GFS filesystem is limited to 16 TB on 32-bit systems, and 8
exabytes (EB) with 64-bit systems. GFS filesystem
sizes up to 8 TB have been tested.
. NFS partitions greater than 2 TB have been tested and are supported.
. Scientific Linux 4.1 user space tools are compiled
for large file support. However, it is not possible to test every
program in this mode. Please file a problem report if issues arise
when using the tools for large file support.
. The inn program does not function correctly with devices larger than
2 TB. This will be addressed in a future release of Scientific Linux.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
So make sure you use mke2fs -b 4096 when making a file system greater than
4GB on 4.0 . I think the problem has to do with "wrap around", which
surely does not seem good.
-Connie Sieh
>
> Thanks for any help or any suggestion
>
> Jorge
>
>
>
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