[suse-sles-e] Filesystem limitations on SLES 10

From: Gordon Ross (G.Ross_at_ccw.gov.uk)
Date: Tue Mar 13 2007 - 11:08:21 CET


Message-Id: <45F67813.AC0B.0006.3@ccw.gov.uk>
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 10:08:21 +0000
From: "Gordon Ross" <G.Ross@ccw.gov.uk>
Subject: [suse-sles-e] Filesystem limitations on SLES 10

I've got a 64-bit, SLES 10 server.

Attached to it, is an external RAID array, with a 4.7TB volume
presented to the O/S. We've been having "fun" trying to create
partitions/filesystems on this thing.

Before I go any further, I do NOT want to split this up any way. I just
want a simple 4.7 TB filesystem.

Using YaST, initially I tried to create an LVM partition. This resulted
in a 700-odd GB partition being created. We made several attempts at
doing this, but we always ended up at the same 700GB partition.

After a while, we gave up, and just created a plain 4.7TB partition
formated with XFS. This seemed to work.

However, using things like fdisk/cfisk to look at the partition table
shows really weird stuff.

                                  cfdisk 2.12r

                              Disk Drive: /dev/sdc
                      Size: 5249179844608 bytes, 5249.1 GB
             Heads: 255 Sectors per Track: 63 Cylinders: 638176

    Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label]
Size (MB)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    sdc1 Primary Linux XFS
851121.56*
                            Pri/Log Free Space
4398054.74*

According to http://www.novell.com/linux/kernel_limits.html we should
have had no problems at all.

Can anyone explain what's going on ? I'm guessing that the kernel can
support very large filesystems, it's just the userspace stuff that
can't... However, a 4.7 TB filesystem surely isn't that uncommon
nowadays ?

GTG

-- 
Gordon Ross,
Network Manager/Rheolwr Rhydwaith
Countryside Council for Wales/Cyngor Cefn Gwlad Cymru
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