Thread: [Devil-linux-develop] Disks larger than 2TB

Dear Heiko,

Drives larger than 2TB is a reality. I bought 4TB drive in a store.

But although the Devil Linux is wonderfully suited to be the file server, 
still can not cope with such drives.

The solution is quite simple, and I propose to use them in the near future.

1. The structure of the partition table in the BIOS model can not deal with 
larger disks as 2^32 LBA it is 2TB, so we should use UEFI GPT partitioning.

But for the effective operation of such tables kernel should be compiled with 
the setting: CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y, otherwise kernel will do not recognise 
such partitions properly and the startup scripts will not cope for example in 
finding on such partitions configuration files.

2. Although support for GPT partition somewhat ensures parted, but a great 
addition to the package seems to be a GPT fdisk.
 
(http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/gptfdisk/gptfdisk/0.8.5/gptfdisk-0.8.5.tar.gz) 


This package depends on ncurses but if we do not modify its Makefile (I did 
not), to support unicode is needed ICU libraries package.

(http://download.icu-project.org/files/icu4c/49.1.2/icu4c-49_1_2-src.tgz)

I attach my scripts and configurations for these packages.

3. If we set the legacy_boot flag on GPT partition with Devil-Linux boot, we 
can boot DL on BIOS computer from 3TB drive (tested by me). This can be 
valuable when we run Samba on huge drive and don't want to charge the system 
with additional USB stick. But for this our syslinux build script should be 
modified to grant access to another mbr code, named gptmbr.bin and 
install-on-usb script should test partition table using for example, the 
following test:

[ "`parted -m -s $DEVICE print|grep "^$DEVICE"|awk 'BEGIN{FS=":"}{print $6}'`" 
== "gpt" ]

and selecting appropriate mbr.bin or gptmbr.bin to put into MBR.

Best regards

-- 
Andrzej Odyniec

I wrote:
> I attach my scripts and configurations for these packages.

So there are this scripts.

Regards

-- 
Andrzej Odyniec

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Andrzej,

I like this and will add it to my todo list.
Unfortunately I'm extremely busy lately and it may take a while for me  
to work on this.

Heiko

Quoting Andrzej Odyniec <an...@ma...>:

> Dear Heiko,
>
> Drives larger than 2TB is a reality. I bought 4TB drive in a store.
>
> But although the Devil Linux is wonderfully suited to be the file server,
> still can not cope with such drives.
>
> The solution is quite simple, and I propose to use them in the near future.
>
> 1. The structure of the partition table in the BIOS model can not deal with
> larger disks as 2^32 LBA it is 2TB, so we should use UEFI GPT partitioning.
>
> But for the effective operation of such tables kernel should be compiled with
> the setting: CONFIG_EFI_PARTITION=y, otherwise kernel will do not recognise
> such partitions properly and the startup scripts will not cope for example in
> finding on such partitions configuration files.
>
> 2. Although support for GPT partition somewhat ensures parted, but a great
> addition to the package seems to be a GPT fdisk.
>
> (http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/gptfdisk/gptfdisk/0.8.5/gptfdisk-0.8.5.tar.gz)
>
>
> This package depends on ncurses but if we do not modify its Makefile (I did
> not), to support unicode is needed ICU libraries package.
>
> (http://download.icu-project.org/files/icu4c/49.1.2/icu4c-49_1_2-src.tgz)
>
> I attach my scripts and configurations for these packages.
>
> 3. If we set the legacy_boot flag on GPT partition with Devil-Linux boot, we
> can boot DL on BIOS computer from 3TB drive (tested by me). This can be
> valuable when we run Samba on huge drive and don't want to charge the system
> with additional USB stick. But for this our syslinux build script should be
> modified to grant access to another mbr code, named gptmbr.bin and
> install-on-usb script should test partition table using for example, the
> following test:
>
> [ "`parted -m -s $DEVICE print|grep "^$DEVICE"|awk  
> 'BEGIN{FS=":"}{print $6}'`"
> == "gpt" ]
>
> and selecting appropriate mbr.bin or gptmbr.bin to put into MBR.
>
> Best regards
>
> --
> Andrzej Odyniec
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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-- 

Regards
   Heiko Zuerker
   http://www.devil-linux.org

Heiko Zuerker wrote:
> I like this and will add it to my todo list.
> Unfortunately I'm extremely busy lately and it may take a while for me  
> to work on this.

This is natural. And my idea isn't urgent in any sense.

I tried to compile GPT fdisk without icu library (which is relatively large). 
Attached script I altered with changing Makefile using awk according to 
authors instructions. All utilities are working near correct, but about one 
issue I send message to the author.

I don't know exactly, for what Rod is using unicode ICU libraries. The only 
place for text is comment name on GPT partitions, but for DL, I think, this is 
absolutely unneeded. So maybe better is cancel the ICU to the time when it 
will be necessary to do something else.

As for now, I'm booting (on BIOS machine) from GPT partitioned disk (using 
Syslinux) and on this huge disk I have several partitions.

Journalists threatened for some time that all machines will soon UEFI. ;-)

Best regards

-- 
Andrzej Odyniec

Andrzej,

Your scripts have been added to CVS, but I did not do anything with
install-on-usb yet.

Thanks for the submission!

Best Regards
  Heiko Zuerker

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrzej Odyniec [mailto:an...@ma...] 
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2012 1:57 PM
To: dev...@li...
Subject: Re: [Devil-linux-develop] Disks larger than 2TB

Heiko Zuerker wrote:
> I like this and will add it to my todo list.
> Unfortunately I'm extremely busy lately and it may take a while for me 
> to work on this.

This is natural. And my idea isn't urgent in any sense.

I tried to compile GPT fdisk without icu library (which is relatively
large). 
Attached script I altered with changing Makefile using awk according to
authors instructions. All utilities are working near correct, but about one
issue I send message to the author.

I don't know exactly, for what Rod is using unicode ICU libraries. The only
place for text is comment name on GPT partitions, but for DL, I think, this
is absolutely unneeded. So maybe better is cancel the ICU to the time when
it will be necessary to do something else.

As for now, I'm booting (on BIOS machine) from GPT partitioned disk (using
Syslinux) and on this huge disk I have several partitions.

Journalists threatened for some time that all machines will soon UEFI. ;-)

Best regards

--
Andrzej Odyniec

Heiko Zuerker wrote:
> Your scripts have been added to CVS, but I did not do anything with
> install-on-usb yet.

Dear Heiko,

Thanks for that. I do not think, that changes in install-on-usb are urgent. I 
mainly signaled the possibility of a booting from large disk.

But the goal is certainly full support of (U)EFI Boot and this will require 
major changes in install-on-usb. Now UEFI motherboards are manufactured more 
and more, and compatibility modules has some limitations. I'm trying to do it, 
but in GRUB EFI boot is quite complicated but Syslinux EFI is still in alpha 
testing (version 6.00pre3). I think that if someone need to do BIOS boot from 
a GPT partition now, he/she is an expert and the changes in script 
install-on-usb for this person will be not problematic. It is only to write 
another MBR.

When I load the DL with UEFI without compliance module, I will let to know.

Best regards

-- 
Andrzej Odyniec