CentOS - Oct 2006 - 2TB limit, weird mounting issues on reboot

Greetings,

I'm seeing some weird issues surrounding the 2 terabyte limit on my 3ware
(9590SE, PCI Express model) raid controller.  Currently, the raid array is 6
x 500GB disks for a total of around 2.3 terabytes formatted. Looking at the
documentation on the 3ware site, the raid card can handle a single partition
over 2TB, but it still looks like fdisk fails to create a primary partition
over the 2TB limit.  I did resort to parted, and it creates a partition over
2TB.  And, in fact, I can run mke2fs on this partition, and mount it.  I
also have an entry for this partition in the /etc/fstab file.

However, if I reboot the system, the partition fails to mount from the init
scripts.  If I comment out the /etc/fstab line, and run a mount command from
rc.local, that works; however, the partition is now seen as a 259GB
partition, and not the 2.3TB I originally had to start.  I have the feeling
the partition table is getting hosed on a reboot.  Fdisk seems to handle the
partition on the raid array just fine if it is a hair under 2TB, and from
all the things I've read, it seems fdisk and other disk utilities still have
real problems with partitions greater than 2TB (32-bit x 512-byte blocks,
etc).

I guess I'm shocked.  I figured this wouldn't be an issue as of 2006,
but it
still is..... anyone have any similar experiences?  If so, any workarounds
other than just stay at the 2TB limit?

Regards,
Will
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You can not have a DOS partition larger than 2Tb.  parted will create 
one and tell the kernel about the size which works.... until you reboot 
and then the partition is 2Tb smaller than it should be because the 
partition table can not store the MSB of your partition size.

The solution is to use LVM or GPT partitions.

John.

W S wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I'm seeing some weird issues surrounding the 2 terabyte limit on my 
> 3ware (9590SE, PCI Express model) raid controller.  Currently, the raid 
> array is 6 x 500GB disks for a total of around 2.3 terabytes formatted. 
> Looking at the documentation on the 3ware site, the raid card can handle 
> a single partition over 2TB, but it still looks like fdisk fails to 
> create a primary partition over the 2TB limit.  I did resort to parted, 
> and it creates a partition over 2TB.  And, in fact, I can run mke2fs on 
> this partition, and mount it.  I also have an entry for this partition 
> in the /etc/fstab file.
> 
> However, if I reboot the system, the partition fails to mount from the 
> init scripts.  If I comment out the /etc/fstab line, and run a mount 
> command from rc.local, that works; however, the partition is now seen as 
> a 259GB partition, and not the 2.3TB I originally had to start.  I have 
> the feeling the partition table is getting hosed on a reboot.  Fdisk 
> seems to handle the partition on the raid array just fine if it is a 
> hair under 2TB, and from all the things I've read, it seems fdisk and 
> other disk utilities still have real problems with partitions greater 
> than 2TB (32-bit x 512-byte blocks, etc).
> 
> I guess I'm shocked.  I figured this wouldn't be an issue as of
2006,
> but it still is..... anyone have any similar experiences?  If so, any 
> workarounds other than just stay at the 2TB limit?
> 
> Regards,
> Will
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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-- 
John Newbigin
Computer Systems Officer
Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
http://www.ict.swin.edu.au/staff/jnewbigin