Debian installer with RAID of 6TB
Hello,
I have been doing some testing on a new server before deployment. I came across a limitation that I could not find documented
and seems not to be a limitation of any of the individual components. It also seems restricted to the d-i.
I have been installing from the Debian Lenny amd64 DVD (5.0.4) and Debian Squeeze (1st March 2010).
The issue is that the 6TB (RAID50 8*1TB on a 3ware 9650) is visible to partman but not all usable. I have created a boot
partition (256MB) and then an LVM partition (the rest). The LVM partition stops at 4TB and the remaining 2TB is listed as 'Free
Space'. This can then not be used at all. Any attempt to use this results in an error.
The partition type is GPT. The symptoms are the same on both Lenny and Squeeze.
After continuing with the installation (on Squeeze) and using parted to look at the disk, I get the following:
---
parted /dev/sda
GNU Parted 1.8.8.git-dirty
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) p
Warning: Not all of the space available to /dev/sda appears to be used, you can fix the GPT to use all of the space (an extra
3906207744 blocks) or continue
with the current setting?
Fix/Ignore? Fix
Model: AMCC 9650SE-8LP DISK (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 6000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 17.4kB 256MB 256MB ext2 boot boot
2 256MB 4000GB 4000GB lvm
---
I am unable, with parted, to extend the LVM partition as parted does not seem to recognise LVM.
It seems to me that, maybe, libparted, partman or something related in the d-i does not work with more than 4TB. All 6TB are
shown but cannot be used. As nothing seems to have a 4TB limit I am not sure what it could be.
I still have a short time to do some testing before the machine needs to be deployed. Any ideas or solutions are welcome.
Off topic, but it would be great if grub2 would be updated to recognise Xen installs.
Regards
Chris
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