1.5TB ext3 partitions - mke2fs problems at 2^31 blocks

Damian Menscher menscher at uiuc.edu
Mon Oct 31 22:10:48 UTC 2005


On Mon, 31 Oct 2005, Alex Bligh wrote:

> mke2fs -j /dev/sdb
>
> My suspicious mind says this is 1/3 of the way through the disk, which is
> 2^31 blocks, i.e. where the block number goes negative in a signed
> environment.
>
> Is there a problem with ext3 supporting more than 2^31 blocks?
> 
> System:
> 	AMD64 2 x Opteron 275
> 	Ubuntu Breezy
> 	mke2fs 1.38
> 	Kernel 2.6.12 + 3w9xxx from 2.6.14 or from 3-ware
> 	3-ware 9550SX RAID controller, latest firmware, BIOS
> 	RAID-5 1.5 TB single partition disk

FWIW, we've been running a 3.5T partition for about a year, on 
x86_64-smp FC4.  We had to compile the latest parted to create the GPT 
partition table, but other than that it wasn't a big problem.

I can say that we had serious problems getting a >2TB partition working 
with a 32-bit machine, or a 2.4 kernel.  Those are the problems that 
Andreas just referenced in his message in the other thread.  :)

I don't remember for sure whether we're actually USING more than 2TB of 
the 3.5 right now (and the machine is down today so I can't check).

Damian Menscher
-- 
-=#| <menscher at uiuc.edu> www.uiuc.edu/~menscher/ Ofc:(650)273-2757 |#=-
-=#| The above opinions are not necessarily those of my employers. |#=-




More information about the Ext3-users mailing list