Greetings. I am trying to create a 10TB (approx) ext3 filesystem. I am able to successfully create the partition using parted, but when I try to use mkfs.ext3, I get an error stating there is an 8TB limit for ext3 filesystems. I looked at the specs for 5 on the "upstream" vendor's website, and they indicate that there is a 16TB limit on ext3. Has anyone been able to create a ext3 filesystem larger than 8TB? If ext3 isn't an option, has anyone used the kmod-xfs-smp.i686 module mentioned on the centos site? Surely it doesn't have an 8TB limit... specs: Centos 5.1 kernel-2.6.18-53.1.14.el5 3Ware 9550SXU 12port raid card Am I just walking into a big nightmare? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Monty
On Fri, 2 May 2008 at 2:36pm, Monty Shinn wrote> I am trying to create a 10TB (approx) ext3 filesystem. I am able to > successfully create the partition using parted, but when I try to use > mkfs.ext3, I get an error stating there is an 8TB limit for ext3 filesystems. > > I looked at the specs for 5 on the "upstream" vendor's website, and they > indicate that there is a 16TB limit on ext3. > > Has anyone been able to create a ext3 filesystem larger than 8TB?Yes. 'mke2fs -F' forces it to make the FS, even though it thinks it's too big. "They" should have changed that when 16TB ext3 fs support moved from tech preview to production ready, but I think it got missed. Maybe in 5.2... -- Joshua Baker-LePain QB3 Shared Cluster Sysadmin UCSF
On Fri, May 02, 2008 at 02:36:41PM -0500, Monty Shinn wrote:> Greetings. > > I am trying to create a 10TB (approx) ext3 filesystem. I am able to > successfully create the partition using parted, but when I try to use > mkfs.ext3, I get an error stating there is an 8TB limit for ext3 > filesystems. > > I looked at the specs for 5 on the "upstream" vendor's website, and they > indicate that there is a 16TB limit on ext3. > > Has anyone been able to create a ext3 filesystem larger than 8TB? > > If ext3 isn't an option, has anyone used the kmod-xfs-smp.i686 module > mentioned on the centos site? Surely it doesn't have an 8TB limit... > > specs: > > Centos 5.1 > kernel-2.6.18-53.1.14.el5 > 3Ware 9550SXU 12port raid card > > Am I just walking into a big nightmare? > > Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. >I think it *theoretically* should work as ext3 should to 16TB. However, we ran into issues with userland tools and such. Possibly related to x86_64 vs i386 stuff, but in the end to avoid continued troubleshooting we just used centosplus + jfs. Works perfectly for our 10TB filesystem. Ray
Monty Shinn wrote:> > I am trying to create a 10TB (approx) ext3 filesystem. I am able to > successfully create the partition using parted, but when I try to use > mkfs.ext3, I get an error stating there is an 8TB limit for ext3 > filesystems. > > If ext3 isn't an option, has anyone used the kmod-xfs-smp.i686 module > mentioned on the centos site? Surely it doesn't have an 8TB limit...You'll have all sorts of troubles with Ext3 once you step deeper into the TB zone. Just use XFS. That's what we did, works fine for us. And it's typically faster when the files are very large (especially delete is very fast). No other filesystem will be as reliable as Ext3 if the machine suddenly loses power, but if you have a battery backup or something like that, you should be fine with non-Ext3 filesystems. -- Florin Andrei http://florin.myip.org/
But... Can i do that just with centos install cd and 3ware drivers? Format the volumes with 8TB/9TB/10TB without problems? Regards, --- Eduardo Silvestre nfsi telecom, lda. eduardo.silvestre at nfsi.pt Tel. (+351) 21 949 2300 - Fax (+351) 21 949 2301 http://www.nfsi.pt/ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray Van Dolson" <rayvd at bludgeon.org> To: centos at centos.org Sent: Sexta-feira, 2 de Maio de 2008 21H15m GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: Re: [CentOS] ext3 filesystems larger than 8TB On Fri, May 02, 2008 at 04:09:48PM -0400, Ross S. W. Walker wrote:> > I think it *theoretically* should work as ext3 should to 16TB. > > However, we ran into issues with userland tools and such. Possibly > > related to x86_64 vs i386 stuff, but in the end to avoid continued > > troubleshooting we just used centosplus + jfs. Works > > perfectly for our > > 10TB filesystem. > > I'm curious what you store that you need 10TB of linear storage? > > I have had 4-6-8TB storage systems, but the storage was always > divvied up between different applications. > > -Ross >It's almost all Oracle database dump files... one database by itself is 4.5TB! Don't ask me what's in these things... :) Ray _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS at centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos