[CentOS] formatting large volume

On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 09:47 -0400, Ross Walker wrote:
> 
> On Oct 14, 2008, at 10:36 PM, Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com>  
> wrote:
> 
> > I just got a new server with a Dell MD-1000 SAS unit and 6-750  
> > gigabyte
> > drives which are now initializing in RAID 10 which will give me just
> > about 2 terabytes.
> >
> > I vaguely recall reading that fdisk wasn't suitable for partitioning  
> > and
> > wonder if I shouldn't be using partd instead. I am also wondering if I
> > should use lvm or just mkfs to create the filesystem. Anyone have
> > suggestions before I blunder in?
> 
> Just pvcreate the whole disk and forgo partitioning it. Then create a  
> vg out of it and start creating lvs.
----
OK - makes sense but I am a bit confused here.

I have done the pgcreate and tested lvcreate but wonder about
'setphysicalextentsize' because in the man page, it states, "The default
of 4 MB leads to a maximum logical volume size of around 256GB" which
makes me think that if I want one volume when this is all done, I have
to increase that value.

# fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 2248.8 GB, 2248818032640 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 273403 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

So thinking that I would need a volume just under 10 times the maximum
of 256GB, I would have to set the physicalextentsize to 64 MB (32 not
being quite large enough and thus 64 being the next increment in power
of 2)

Does this make sense?

Craig