Thank you Connie, I've already read that but I thought it won't be
necessary to update to 4.1 to achieve the support for filesystems larger
than 2TB and I hoped that somebody on the list gave me some hint to
resolve this issue without the need for update.
But I will try with SL4.1 (or maybe before eith XFS) if there is no
other solution.
Thanks again
Jorge
On Wed, 2005-08-17 at 17:30, Connie Sieh wrote:
> 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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Jorge Izquierdo e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Laboratorio de Física de Altas Energías
Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. Phone: 34 91 497 4541
Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
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