[CentOS] mkfs.ext3 on a 9TB volume

Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith at ieee.org
Mon Sep 12 04:55:25 UTC 2005


On Sun, 2005-09-11 at 21:01 -0700, Francois Caen wrote:
> I've seen you mention that 1TB limit.

Signed LBA32 limitation.  Various hardware and kernel limitations are
commonplace.  But it seems to nip me with Ext3 entirely.

I've been able to create large XFS filesystems for non-booting volumes
(with a non-PC disk label) in the past without issue, every single time.

> Could you please post some references to it?

Not really.  It's one of those things that is extremely poorly
documented -- just like disk geometry and other things.  I bet if I did
a presentation or HOWTO, it would be the best documentation compared to
what's out there.

> I'm now familiar with limits at 2TB (gpt), 4TB (ext3), 16TB (ext2) but
> you're the only person talking about a 1TB barrier.

What I said was there is _no_consistency_ above 1TiB for Ext3.  Some
systems absolutely prevent me creating or -- worse yet -- moving a
volume that is larger than 1TiB.  That's the problem.

With XFS, I can _always_ use a disk label and create the filesystems at
just about any size (although booting is another story).  This is not
true with Ext3.

> I'd like to hear about that.

To be honest, I haven't run into them with the 2.6.5+ kernels.  But I
still do on the 2.4 kernels.  It's clearly a signed LBA32 limitation
everytime.

-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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