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From: Ranman on 15 Feb 2010 17:42
Hello All,

I've recently built a Debian lenny box and am having an issue with my 7TB
RAID 5 array. All seems good when using parted (fdisk cannot create a
partition > 2TB?). I am able to create the partition, create a jfs file
system, mount it, and copy files to it. Upon a reboot however the partition
seems to be corrupt and cannot be mounted. The error indicates that there
are no partitions on the drive. Jfsutils indicates that all super blocks
are bad and that the file system cannot be be recovered. The same issue has
occured on two seperate boxes with >2TB partitions.

I read that I needed to compile in support for EFI GUID Partition support.
I have run make menuconfig and it appears that this option is already
compiled into my kernel by default. I am at a lose as to how to approach
the issue at this point. Any ideas? Any one else experience this problem?

More Info:
Linux servername 2.6.26-2-amd64 #1 SMP Tue Jan 12 22:12:20 UTC 2010 x86_64
GNU/Linux



From: Nico Kadel-Garcia on 15 Feb 2010 20:11
On Feb 15, 5:42 pm, "Ranman" <ranman...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I've recently built a Debian lenny box and am having an issue with my 7TB
> RAID 5 array.  All seems good when using parted (fdisk cannot create a
> partition > 2TB?).  I am able to create the partition, create a jfs file
> system, mount it, and copy files to it.  Upon a reboot however the partition
> seems to be corrupt and cannot be mounted.  The error indicates that there
> are no partitions on the drive.  Jfsutils indicates that all super blocks
> are bad and that the file system cannot be be recovered.  The same issue has
> occured on two seperate boxes with >2TB partitions.

fdisk is an *old* tool. It can have serious issues with 32-bit
limitations. 2^32 * 512 bytes = roughly 2 Terabytes. I ran into that
issue with some fiber channel hardware controllers years ago.

I can't vouch for Lenny, or JFS, but I do wonder how many disks you're
handling and if you haven't done anything silly, like running too many
drives on the same power supply? What are the disks and the
controllers? In fact, are you using a hardware or software controller
for all the drives?

> I read that I needed to compile in support for EFI GUID Partition support..
> I have run make menuconfig and it appears that this option is already
> compiled into my kernel by default.  I am at a lose as to how to approach
> the issue at this point.  Any ideas?  Any one else experience this problem?
>
> More Info:
> Linux servername 2.6.26-2-amd64 #1 SMP Tue Jan 12 22:12:20 UTC 2010 x86_64
> GNU/Linux

From: David W. Hodgins on 16 Feb 2010 11:40
On Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:42:35 -0500, Ranman <ranman230(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> I've recently built a Debian lenny box and am having an issue with my 7TB
> RAID 5 array. All seems good when using parted (fdisk cannot create a
> partition > 2TB?). I am able to create the partition, create a jfs file

The dos mbr is limited to a total disk size (not just partition)
of 2TB. Trying to create/write past 2TB will result in wrap
around, causing corruption.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

From "man fdisk" ...
fdisk doesn't understand GUID Partition Table (GPT) and it is not
designed for large
partitions. In particular case use more advanced GNU parted(8).

While your kernel appears to have guid support enabled, you have
to use partitioning software that also supports it, and you have
to select guid as the partition table type (aka gpt).

With parted, you would use "mklabel gpt", followed by the normal
partition creation.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

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