Largest Patrition

[Sachin Patel]

Hi All,
What is the limitation of Linux for partition?
Can I have 1.8 TB partition?
Linux 6.2. Kernal 2.2.19

Sachin

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi there.
Depends on your Linux ( SuSe, Debian, Mandrake..).
With that kernel it should be possible.
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi there.
You should it with the LVM.
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[Sachin Patel]

Hi Alexander,
We have Red Hat 6.2. What do I need in order to use LVM? Is is possible without LVM? We are currntly not using LVM.
We creates the LUN using Santricity (SM7client). Then uses fdisk or cfdisk to partition and mke2fs to build large file system.
Yesteday I have created large LUN 1.8Tb then try to run fdsik,cfdisk but it error outs.

Sachin

[Jerome Fenal_1]

I don't remember where I saw this, but largest partition on Linux won't exceed 300GB.
You must use LVM.
I aggregated 2 377 GB RAIDSETs on Compaq's EMA12K FC under 2.4.3-pre4+LVM patches as of that time, and it worked flawlessly.
Don't forget to use an adequate file-system (my choice : ReiserFS), or you will face enormous downtime due to fsck...)

Regards,

Jerome

[Sachin Patel]

Hi
We have already 624.24gb partition. So 300GB is not real number.

Sachin

[Kodjo Agbenu · Accepted solution]

Hello Sachin,

With Linux 2.4, the largest filesystem size is currently 2 TB. Read the article at the following URL :

http://www.linux.cu/pipermail/linux-l/2001-May/009227.html

According to the partition size limit, 2 TB seems to be the limitation, but I have no precise reference on it.

According to LVM, it would probably be difficult (but possible, I did so) to install it on RedHat 6.2.

If you need LVM, I would suggest SuSE (starting at 6.3). The were the most active sponsor (and participant) in LVM development.

To summarize the steps to LVM :

-> Make sure that your kernel supports LVM. I would suggest at least 2.4.1 (the first official kernel with LVM built-in). A pre-2.4.1 kernel would cause lots of problems applying the patches (very bad packaging).

-> Make sure you install LVM utilities (version 0.9.x with kernel >= 2.4.1, or 0.8.x with kernel < 2.4).

-> Avoid booting with root filesystem on LVM, unless you have a SuSE which makes all necessary things using "initrd" in order to make LVM available at the first bootup process steps.

-> After having a running LVM-kernel and the appropriate version of LVM utilities, create the LVM structure as follows :

* Create your partitions (let's say : /dev/sda5 to /dev/sda8).
* Create the physical volumes :

pvcreate /dev/sda5
pvcreate /dev/sda6
pvcreate /dev/sda7
pvcreate /dev/sda8

* Create and extend the volume groups :

vgcreate vgdata1 /dev/sda5
vgextend vgdata1 /dev/sda6
vgextend vgdata1 /dev/sda7
vgextend vgdata1 /dev/sda8

* Create logical volumes and format filesystems inside them :

lvcreate -L 2047 -n lvappli vgdata1
mke2fs -m 0 /dev/vgdata1/lvappli

-> Unless you use SuSE, do not forget to activate the volume groups in startup scripts. For my part, I edited /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit and added the following two commands :

* vgscan
* vgchange -a y

If you need a good introduction to LVM :

http://www.suse.de/en/support/oracle/docs/lvm_whitepaper.pdf

Good luck.

Kodjo