On 28/08/2009, at 10:59 PM, Jim Perrin wrote: > On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 7:03 AM, Götz Reinicke - > IT-Koordinator<goetz.reinicke at filmakademie.de> wrote: >> Hi, >> >> I'm trying to set up an iscsi 12.5 TB storage for some data backup. >> >> Doing so, I had some difficulties to find the right tool, maybe it's >> also a question of the system settings... >> >> The server is a 32Bit CentOS 5.3 with the recent updates. Ths iscsi >> connection can be establised. >> >> fdisk and parted fail to create any information on the device or fail >> completely. >> >> using the lvm tools (pvcreate, vgcreate, lvcreate), I could finaly >> create a logical volume: >> >> lvdisplay /dev/VolGroup02/lvol0 >> --- Logical volume --- >> LV Name /dev/VolGroup02/lvol0 >> VG Name VolGroup02 >> LV UUID h7T6tD-JZw2-UEdb-q1ml-BDqp-9E0u-mAop6x >> LV Write Access read/write >> LV Status available >> # open 0 >> LV Size 12,73 TB >> Current LE 3337487 >> Segments 1 >> Allocation inherit >> Read ahead sectors auto >> - currently set to 256 >> Block device 253:4 >> >> >> But, I can't create a filesystem on it: >> >> mkfs.ext3 -m 2 -j -O dir_index -v -b 4096 -L iscsi2lvol0 >> /dev/mapper/VolGroup02-lvol0 > > You have to smack mkfs around a bit to get it to work. > The incantations are listed here, along with the various limitations. > The long and short of it is that you have to use -F to tell mkfs that > you're really, REALLY sure. > http://www.bofh-hunter.com/2008/02/11/large-filesystem-creation/ > For a 4K block size I think the maximum ext3 filesystem size is 8TB. You may need to use an 8K block size which gives a maximum filesystem size of 16TB. Neil