Maximum number of available partitions on Debian GNU/Linux (lenny).

[Teodor <mteodor@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I'm trying to setup a mail server with flexible storage allocation.
The solution I was thinking about was to create 10 logical volumes
(LV) with the corresponding volume groups (VG), one for each major
mailbox storage (/home/a, /home/c, /home/d.. /home/m..). From the
start each of these will have only 60GB, but if the disk usage will be
over 80% I'll add a new logical partition to the VG and later resize
the LV. This schema could give a better utilization of disk space
(smaller partitions, >50% utilization, different sizes as needed,
flexibility to expand on demand).

So far the plan was good, in practice I've discovered that the Linux
kernel cannot access more than 15 partitions (all the partitions >=16
do NOT have a corresponding block device in /dev). I could create up
to 60 partitions using 'fdisk'. However, in /proc/partitions and /dev
only the first ones up to 15 are available.
The only references to this subject that I've found are these:
  http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=152404
  http://osdir.com/ml/anaconda-devel-list/2009-04/threads.html#00438

Not being able to use more than 10 partitions for the mailboxes in
/home kind of ruins the above plan.
Does anyone from this list knows if there is a way to activate these
partitions? Probably I won't need more than 25-30 but only 10 logical
partitions are not enough in this case.

Thanks