Re: max. partition size on 5.x

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Rainer Duffner wrote:
> Brooks Davis wrote:
>
> >On Mon, Sep 13, 2004 at 11:02:13PM +0200, Claus Guttesen wrote:
> >> Hi.
> >>
> >> Not shure whether this is the right place to ask, but
> >> I haven't found other sources of information.
> >>
> >> I deployed a beta3-nfs-server which works fine. Two
> >> IDE-to-SCSI-cabinets are connected to the server using
> >> an aic7899-controller. The first cabinet has approx. 2
> >> TB (12 disks at 200 GB, as expected). When I connected
> >> the second cabinet using 250 GB disks, I exptected
> >> approx. 2.5 TB, but only saw 764 GB.
> >>
> >> Is there any limit that is imposed by 5.x in terms of
> >> max. partition size? This is running on a Compaq DL
> >> 380 dual PIII (G2) with 3 GB RAM, microstorage
> >> cabinet.
> >>
> >> The raid-system became visible by the usual
> >> 'camcontrol rescan all' and I used 'fdisk -I /dev/da2'
> >> and 'disklabel -w /dev/da2s1'.
> >
> >The limit on the size of a disk is unreachable, but we have a lack of
> >good partitioning tools at the moment. bsdlabel (the program formerly
> >known as disklabel) is limited to 2TB.  Sunlabel appears to be limited
> >to 16TB in 2TB partitions and fdisk is limited to 2TB due to bugs in
> >the program and 4TB due to the actual format.  If you don't need to
> >boot off the slice, you may wish to try gpt(8) which should support
> >any disk money can buy, but which we can't currently boot off of GPT
> >partitions.  I'm in the process of getting some documentation on this in
> >to the handbook.
> >
> >
>
> That would be a good idea.
> The data in the handbook is seriously outdated (when was 3.0 "current"?).
> (I wanted to file a PR, I swear, but that day the FreeBSD-website was
> down and later I forgot...<g>)
>
> The question has come-up in various lists and newsgroup the last couple
> of weeks.
> As IDE2SCSI RAIDs are getting increasingly cheap and big, this problem
> will show-up more often than not in the future.
>
>
> A howto  for gpt would also be good.
> Not that I need one now, but now that 1GB mail-storage has come en vogue....
>
>
>
> cheers,
> Rainer
>

See http://www.freebsd.org/projects/bigdisk.  It's not complete yet by any
means, but it gives some useful info.

Scott