Windows Beats Linux!

watcher · n00b Joined: 09 Dec 2004 Posts: 2 Location: Houston

I never thought I would say that, but....

We have been working for some time trying to get a Promise VTrak 100 hard drive chassis with 10 - 400GB HDs to work properly using the 2.6.9 kernel with the CONFIG_LBD enabled.

The problem is, fdisk can see the full 3.5TB, create a single partition, and format with reiser. No problem. But if you perform a DF -h all you can see is a max of 1.3TB. We have tried several things in Linux even Novell's Suse, redhat, and BSD, and Gentoo Sparch64 but nothing has worked as of yet. But Windows

2003 has no problem at all.

What we are currently attempting is:
Split the Promise VTrak 100 in to two 1.5TB (Partitioned, formatted, and can see 1.5TB) drives and right now setting up EVMS to create one linaer drive of 3TB. The problem here if this works is that we will lose 500gig of disk space. We should have the results soon.

All we want to be able to do is have a single 3.5TB partition and additional Promise systems in the future and use EVMS to expand the volume. Does anybody have a clue of what to do? We DO NOT want to use Windows 2K3, but it is looking like we are going to be forced to do so

So here is we can see:
There is still a 2TB limit in the kernel 2.6.9 from the 2.4.6 dev sources, this seems to be a limitation in the /dev devices.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Refer to: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=261564&highlight=3tb

Current Config:
Compaq 6400R
2gig Ram
CPQ 3200 Raid Ctrl
2x9.1g < Mirrored OS Drive>

Adaptec 29160 Ultra160 SCSI adapter
Promise VTrak 100

curtis119 · Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 5:47 pm Post subject:

Large disk support has to be supported by the disk driver itself as well as by the filesystem driver. LBD in the kernel simply allows the kernel memory space (or something like that) to support them. I assume that you are using the generic SCSI driver for this array? It has a limit to how large the partitions can be.

Promise offers closed source binary drivers for linux for the Supertrak100 (there is no vtrak100 only vtrak15100 and 15200). They are not available through any distro as far as I know. You have to get them directly from Promise. They are free to download and use of course but you must use a distro that they support which is currently redhat, suse, turbolinux and openlinux. The drivers are dated from 2001 so a 2.4 kernel is most likely necessary. The README included with the driver should give you more exact info.

If you have a vtrak15100 or 15200 there is a firmware upgrade that addresses volumes larger than 2TB being reported incorrectly to the OS. This may be the problem you are experiencing.

www.promise.com click on support>download and choose your product from the drop down list.
_________________
Gentoo: it's like wiping your ass with silk.

JackDog · Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 8:33 pm Post subject:

curtis119 · Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 9:45 pm Post subject:

watcher · n00b Joined: 09 Dec 2004 Posts: 2 Location: Houston

Yes we have tried XFS and others, have not even attempted reiser 4 yet.

Some good news is that the test we were doing came out good. By splitting up the Promise in 1.5TB drives then using EVMS we can see 3TB :roll:

. The only drawback with this is that we are losing a lot of disk space. 800gig with the two R5 disk in the Promise. At least there is a little success, but is still not where it needs to be.

We are looking at the Promise site on the rom upgrades also. Not sure if that will play much into the problem or not right now because when we had M$'s 2003 server install all the disk space was available.

We still have a little time (EOM) to get this working properly, so hopefully we can resolve the problem before then