Drive shows up as a 2GB disk while it is 18GB

Message

ply · Post by **ply** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 9:47 am

As the topic says.. I have a Fujitsu MAJ3182M SUN18G drive. But when I run fdisk on it and do the initial configuration (setting cyl/heads/sec) it comes up as 2GB (or less) no matter what I input.
I bet there is a switch somewhere to set this, right?

I have tried with two disks (same model) but no result.

Any input is appreciated.
Thanks
/K

Ferris · Post by **Ferris** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 12:08 pm

If it's not already labeled (and yours isn't), from fdisk you will have to label it by hand. That particular disk probably needs to end up looking something like this:
Disk /dev/sdb (Sun disk label): 19 heads, 248 sectors, 7200 rpm
7506 cylinders, 2 alternate cylinders, 7508 physical cylinders
0 extra sects/cyl, interleave 1:1
SUN18G cyl 7506 alt 2 hd 19 sec 248
Units = cylinders of 4712 * 512 bytes
(Or, if you have specifics for your drive, substitute them.)

After you define the label, you might have to go ahead and partition the disk before exiting with the 'w' command.

Unfortunately, there is no switch for this. fdisk does not know about any disks build this century, last I knew.

Also, you might have better luck using parted to label it, but I don't have the documentation in front of me, so I can't give a quick summary of what you would need to do.

ply · Post by **ply** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 12:16 pm

Thanks for the reply.
However, it seems this that the 'root' partition is limited to 2GB.
Could anyone confirm this?

Oh and why does fdisk need to know about the RPM of my drive?

rusty · Post by **rusty** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 12:20 pm

Try enabling LBA. This enables really old machines to have partitions larger than 2G.

ply · Post by **ply** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 1:24 pm

how would I go about doing this on a Sun Netra T1?

rusty · Post by **rusty** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 4:57 pm

It's either a setting in BIOS or an option in grub.conf or lilo.conf, depending on whether you use grub or lilo respectively.

xming · Post by **xming** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 11:39 pm

BIOS, grub or lilo on a sparc, please enlighten us!

xming

rusty · Post by **rusty** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 11:49 pm

I never ran or learned about SPARC, so i don't know.

starrbuck · Post by **starrbuck** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 5:41 pm

There's no such thing as enabling LBA on a SPARC. There is also no grub or lilo, only silo.

You will just need to use the "s" option of fdisk to set the proper Sun disk label for the 18G drive:

Code: Select all

Command (m for help): s
Building a new sun disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.

Drive type
   ?   auto configure
   0   custom (with hardware detected defaults)
   a   Quantum ProDrive 80S
   b   Quantum ProDrive 105S
   c   CDC Wren IV 94171-344
   d   IBM DPES-31080
   e   IBM DORS-32160
   f   IBM DNES-318350
   g   SEAGATE ST34371
   h   SUN0104
   i   SUN0207
   j   SUN0327
   k   SUN0340
   l   SUN0424
   m   SUN0535
   n   SUN0669
   o   SUN1.0G
   p   SUN1.05
   q   SUN1.3G
   r   SUN2.1G
   s   IOMEGA Jaz
Select type (? for auto, 0 for custom):

Use "0" for custom. You can accept the defaults, which "might" work, or look up the specs on your drive to make sure you get them correct.

The Gentoo Handbook for SPARC actually describes how to setup the disks using fdisk:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/h ... #doc_chap3

The example above was for a custom disk type, and it warns you that the auto detection might not work.

Also, I don't think root is limited to 2G. On one of my SPARCs, I am running a RAID 0 array with 4 2G drives on the root and having no issues:

Code: Select all

lavon ~ # df -k
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/md0               7638648   2124876   5125740  30% /
/dev/sda1                66136      2808     59916   5% /boot
none                     67864         0     67864   0% /dev/shm

Code: Select all

lavon ~ # cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
# $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo-src/rc-scripts/etc/fstab,v 1.14 2003/10/13 20:03:38 azarah Exp $
#
# <fs>                  <mountpoint>    <type>          <opts>                  <dump/pass>

/dev/md0                /               ext3            noatime                 0 1
/dev/sda2               none            swap            sw,pri=1                0 0
/dev/sdb2               none            swap            sw,pri=1                0 0
/dev/sdc2               none            swap            sw,pri=1                0 0
/dev/sdd2               none            swap            sw,pri=1                0 0
/dev/sda1               /boot           ext2            noatime                 0 2
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0      /mnt/cdrom      iso9660         noauto,ro               0 0
#/dev/fd0               /mnt/floppy     auto            noauto                  0 0
none                    /proc           proc            defaults                0 0
none                    /dev/shm        tmpfs           defaults                0 0
none                    /proc/openprom  openpromfs      defaults                0 0

Code: Select all

lavon ~ # cat /etc/silo.conf
partition = 1
root = /dev/md0
timeout = 100
        image = /kernel-2.4.31
        label = linux
        append="md=0,/dev/sda4,/dev/sdb4,/dev/sdc4,/dev/sdd4"

Code: Select all

lavon ~ # fdisk /dev/sda

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda (Sun disk label): 19 heads, 80 sectors, 2733 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1520 * 512 bytes

   Device Flag    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1             0        90     68400   83  Linux native
/dev/sda2  u         90       180     68400   82  Linux swap
/dev/sda3             0      2733   2077080    5  Whole disk
/dev/sda4           180      2733   1940280   fd  Linux raid autodetect

(All 4 drives look like /dev/sda.)