[CentOS] ext3 filesystems larger than 8TB

Fri May 2 19:54:53 UTC 2008
Ray Van Dolson <rayvd at bludgeon.org>

On Fri, May 02, 2008 at 02:36:41PM -0500, Monty Shinn wrote:
> Greetings.
>
> I am trying to create a 10TB (approx) ext3 filesystem.  I am able to 
> successfully create the partition using parted, but when I try to use 
> mkfs.ext3, I get an error stating there is an 8TB limit for ext3 
> filesystems.
>
> I looked at the specs for 5 on the "upstream" vendor's website, and they  
> indicate that there is a 16TB limit on ext3.
>
> Has anyone been able to create a ext3 filesystem larger than 8TB?
>
> If ext3 isn't an option, has anyone used the kmod-xfs-smp.i686 module 
> mentioned on the centos site?  Surely it doesn't have an 8TB limit...
>
> specs:
>
> Centos 5.1
> kernel-2.6.18-53.1.14.el5
> 3Ware 9550SXU 12port raid card
>
> Am I just walking into a big nightmare?
>
> Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
>

I think it *theoretically* should work as ext3 should to 16TB.
However, we ran into issues with userland tools and such.  Possibly
related to x86_64 vs i386 stuff, but in the end to avoid continued
troubleshooting we just used centosplus + jfs.  Works perfectly for our
10TB filesystem.

Ray