From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Aug 15 11:27:41 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EB1CD1065676 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:27:41 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from joze@ilab.si) Received: from mail.kr.sik.si (mail.kr.sik.si [193.2.137.12]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6B2B28FC2A for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:27:41 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from joze@ilab.si) Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by mail.kr.sik.si (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB2481214039 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:57:00 +0200 (CEST) Received: from mail.kr.sik.si ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (mail.kr.sik.si [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 26868-01 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:56:56 +0200 (CEST) Received: from [192.168.1.140] (unknown [212.235.255.252]) by mail.kr.sik.si (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3EB641214038 for ; Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:56:56 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <48A560E1.7080701@ilab.si> Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:56:33 +0200 From: Joze Volf User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.16 (Windows/20080708) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20030616-p10 (Debian) at kr.sik.si Subject: Large RAID arrays, partitioning X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:27:42 -0000 Hi folks, I have a HP DL320s 2U server with 12 500 GB SATA drives and Smart Array P400 RAID controller. The machine will be a video streaming server for a public library. The system I am installing is 7.0-RELEASE, amd64. I made 2 RAID6 volumes, one 120GB for the system and one 4.3TB for the streaming media content. The first problem I have encountered is that during installation, the large RAID volume wasn't visible. No problem, because I could install the system to the small 120G volume. After the base system installation I decided to delete the large volume using the HP ACU and create a few smaller 1TB volumes, which will hopefully be recognized by the kernel. They were, buth when I ran the fdisk from sysinstall it always reported: WARNING: A geometry of xxxxxxx/255/32 for da1 is incorrect. Using a more likely geometry. If this geometry is incorrect... I was trying to do a few 1TB vinum partitions and tying them together into single concatenated volume (I already did something similar in linux using LVM and it worked great). I had no success. Then I searched the web and found this patch http://yogurt.org/FreeBSD/ciss_large.diff and hoped it will resolve the geometry problem. It did not, but one other thing it should do is allow kernel to get da device for an array > 2TB. It did! I deleted the smaller 1TB volumes and recreated one large 4.3TB RAID volume. The kernel recognized it perfectly as /dev/da1. Great! Then I tried to create a slice using sysintall fdisk and a filesystem using sysinstall label. Nothing but trouble! I searched the web again and found a possible solution to my problem. I used the "newfs -U -O2 /dev/da1" command to create the filesystem directly on the RAID volume. It worked without a problem. Then I mounted /dev/da1 to /var/media and here is the output of "df -h" command: Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/da0s1a 4.3G 377M 3.6G 9% / devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /dev /dev/da0s1e 7.7G 12K 7.1G 0% /tmp /dev/da0s1f 36G 1.6G 31G 5% /usr /dev/da0s1d 58G 25M 53G 0% /var /dev/da1 4.3T 4.0K 4.0T 0% /var/media Is it somehow bad to make a filesystem directly on a storage device such as disk drive or hardware raid volume? Regards, Joze Volf iLab d.o.o.