[CentOS] Speaking of 3Ware/RAID/SATA/9550SX...

Wed Jul 12 21:02:34 UTC 2006
Seth Bardash <seth at integratedsolutions.org>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org 
> [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of Joshua Baker-LePain
> Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 2:36 PM
> To: CentOS mailing list
> Subject: RE: [CentOS] Speaking of 3Ware/RAID/SATA/9550SX...
> 
> On Wed, 12 Jul 2006 at 2:31pm, Seth Bardash wrote
> 
> > Using the 3ware 9550 or 9500 series controllers for any array
larger
> > than 2 TB requires that you set up the controller to use
> > "Auto-Carving", set up and build the kernel to enable multiple
LUNs,
> > rebuild initrd, reboot, and fdisk / mkfs the unused areas.
> >
> > This forces the controller to "Auto-Carve" multiple 2 TB devices
on
> > different LUNS of the same SCSI ID.
> > You also need to enable multiple LUN support in the kernel when
you
> > build a new kernel - which is required.
> 
> This is absolutely *not* required.  RHEL4 (and thus CentOS-4) 
> explicitly 
> support devices and filesystems up to 8TiB.  As I mentioned before, 
> however, one must use gpt disklabels on any device larger 
> than 2TiB.  And 
> this precludes one from booting from such a large device, as 
> neither grub 
> nor lilo understand gpt disk labels.
> 
> -- 
> Joshua Baker-LePain
> Department of Biomedical Engineering
> Duke University

Mr. Joshua Baker-LePain,

You are absolutely correct - BUT I answered under the assumption 
that the original poster wants to boot from this large device and 
the only way to do that is as I explained.

You wrote " And this precludes one from booting from such a 
large device, as neither grub nor lilo understand gpt disk labels."

Exactly. So, if one wants to boot using the standard grub function
AND wants to install Centos with minimal changes, the sequence
I describe works without any additional controllers or disks.

Adding mirrored boot disks with an 8006-2 as mentioned by
someone else is another way to go to get around the 2 TB
BOOT limitation. I stress that this is a BOOT limitation.

Seth Bardash

Integrated Solutions and Systems
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