On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 10:21 AM, Lamar Owen lowen@pari.edu wrote:
You really, really, really don't want to do this. Not on 32-bit. When you roll one byte over 16TB you will lose access to your filesystem, silently, and it will not remount on a 32-bit kernel. XFS works best on a 64-bit kernel for a number of reasons; the one you're likely to hit first is the 16TB hard limit for *occupied* file space; you can mkfs an XFS filesystem on a 17TB or even larger partition or volume, but the moment the occupied data rolls over the 16TB boundary you will be in disaster recovery mode, and a 64-bit kernel will be required for rescue.
The reason I know this? I had it happen. On a CentOS 32-bit backup server with a 17TB LVM logical volume on EMC storage. Worked great, until it rolled 16TB. Then it quit working. Altogether. /var/log/messages told me that the filesystem was too large to be mounted. Had to re-image the VM as a 64-bit CentOS, and then re-attached the RDM's to the LUNs holding the PV's for the LV, and it mounted instantly, and we kept on trucking.
There's a reason upstream doesn't do XFS on 32-bit.
Afaik 32-bit binaries do run on the 64-bit build and compat libraries exist for most everything. You should evaluate if you really *really* need 32-bit.