Date: Sat, 08 Apr 2006 08:46:47 -0600 From: Scott Long <scottl@samsco.org> To: Ensel Sharon <user@dhp.com> Cc: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Subject: Re: UFS2 with 4TB disk _totally absurd_ Message-ID: <4437CCD7.2060307@samsco.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0604081028350.11218-100000@shell.dhp.com> References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0604081028350.11218-100000@shell.dhp.com>
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Ensel Sharon wrote: > On Thu, 6 Apr 2006, Scott Long wrote: > > >>Ensel Sharon wrote: >> >>>>The FDISK and bsdlabel schemes simply cannot deal with >2TB. You'll >>>>need to either put your filesystem directly on the storage device >>>>without and slices/labels, or use GPT to create logical partitions. >>> >>> >>>2TB filesystems are _not large_. FreeBSD should expect 2-4TB > > filesystems > >>>to be in common use in peoples _living rooms_, never mind in the > > office or > >>>datacenter. >>> >>>So 5.x was a total wash in terms of UFS2 and snapshots, largefiles, > > etc., > >>>6.0 still doesn't have working filesystem quotas or snapshots, and it >>>seems, doesn't support modern (circa 2004) hard drives. >>> >>>Maybe a little less time working on FreeBSD 23.0 ... ? >>> >> >>What are you talking about? UFS2, the filesystem, supports storage >>volumes up to 2^63 blocks in size, and filesystems themselves of >>more than 2^53 blocks in size. There is no 2TB limit in UFS2, and I've >>personally created filesystems that are indeed much larger than that.. >>These sizes were supported in 2004, and they are supported in 2006. >>What is limited is the FDISK and BSDLABEL formats, which were designed >>in the early 80's to handle up to 2^32 blocks. Neither of these prevent >>you from creating a large filesystem. Maybe you're looking to have a >>single large volume to hold both your boot filesystem and your data >>filesystem? That's generally a bad idea since it puts more things into >>the path of a failure. Try doing what most people do, which is to boot >>off of a 2 disk mirror (go big and get 500GB disks if you want) and have >>your data on a separate array that is more redundant and doesn't need to >>use the above partition formats. >> >>Alternatively, find a PC that understands how to boot off of GPT >>partitions, and use that format. It's not FreeBSD's fault that the PC >>BIOS uses the FDISK format. Go complain to IBM and Microsoft for not >>having the foresight to future-proof their partition format 25 years >>ago. > > > > I'm not saying that you can't create 2+ TB filesystems. I am saying that > there are all sorts of problems with them, from snapshotting them, to > fsck, to easy creation with sysinstall. > You also can't configure WiFi with sysinstall. Does that mean that WiFi is broken in FreeBSD? No, it means that sysinstall has outlived its usefulness by 5 years. > And all the while, the reaction has been a non-chalant dismissiveness, > presumably based on the fact that 2+ TB filesystems are out of the norm, > or are "frontier" hardware or whatever. I am writing to inform you that > that is not the case, and has not been for quite some time. I know many > people with 2+ TB filesystems in their houses - I have one _attached to my > television_. > > So whereas the fact that fsck and snapshots and dump and restore and df > and quotas are all broken on 2+ TB: > > http://www.freebsd.org/projects/bigdisk/index.html > > The thought was that that would get cleaned up circa 5.2 or > something. Here we are at 6.1 and it's still broken. Perhaps when > commodity disks exceed 50% of the size of the max known-working FreeBSD > partition the urgency will increase ? > You seem to know exactly what does and doesn't work, and you seem to have a clue on how to make things work. What we need is _help_ in these areas, not people complaining about the obvious. Are you willing to help? Scott
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