Hi, I've got a DAS DELL MD1000 with a bunch of SATA drives in RAID 5 configuration with total space of 5.4TB. This box is attached to a CentOS5 system (kernel 2.6.18-53.1.6.el5). Any idea how to make this space usable? Is there a limit how big a partition can be? What is the work around? Is there a limit how big a file system ca be? I've tried to partition it but no matter how bug partition I create fdisk spits out these messages on the console: --- sdb: very big device. try to use READ CAPACITY(16). SCSI device sdb: 10248519680 512-byte hdwr sectors (5247242 MB) sdb: Write Protect is off --- I decided to not partition the drive and use LVM but the physical volume stopped at 2TB. So, right now I can't use LVM because of this 2TB limit and I'm not sure if I partition the drive how good these partitions are because of the the message from fdisk. Any help or idea is highly appreciated. Thank you Peter -- Peter Blajev Systems Administrator Computer Science and Engineering Department University of California, San Diego Office: EBU3B 1214 Phone: (858) 534-2532 E-mail: pblajev at ucsd.edu
Peter Blajev wrote:> > Hi, > > I've got a DAS DELL MD1000 with a bunch of SATA drives in > RAID 5 configuration > with total space of 5.4TB. This box is attached to a CentOS5 > system (kernel > 2.6.18-53.1.6.el5). > > Any idea how to make this space usable? > Is there a limit how big a partition can be? What is the work around? > Is there a limit how big a file system ca be? > > I've tried to partition it but no matter how bug partition I > create fdisk > spits out these messages on the console: > --- > sdb: very big device. try to use READ CAPACITY(16). > SCSI device sdb: 10248519680 512-byte hdwr sectors (5247242 MB) > sdb: Write Protect is off > --- > > I decided to not partition the drive and use LVM but the > physical volume > stopped at 2TB. > > So, right now I can't use LVM because of this 2TB limit and > I'm not sure if I > partition the drive how good these partitions are because of > the the message > from fdisk. > > Any help or idea is highly appreciated.Undo the LVM config, wipe out any MBR or disklabels on the drive, then pvcreate the raw disk (/dev/sdb) it should be able to handle the whole 5.4TB. -Ross ______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof.
> Undo the LVM config, wipe out any MBR or disklabels on the drive, > then pvcreate the raw disk (/dev/sdb) it should be able to handle > the whole 5.4TB.I tried this but I'll try again tonight just in case I missed something the first time. I didn't check what pvcreate did but vgcreate after that gave me 2TB volume group. Googling around it looks like there is 2TB limit and there should be some kernel parameters to tweak but I still can't get a clear answer. Thanks Peter
On Feb 8, 2008 1:58 PM, Peter Blajev <pblajev at ucsd.edu> wrote:> So, right now I can't use LVM because of this 2TB limit and I'm not sure if I > partition the drive how good these partitions are because of the the message > from fdisk.There is also some information here on creating large file systems: http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_103_11461.shtm --Jeffrey