Topic: support of hard drive > 2 TB in SME server 9 ? [resolved]

[bpkheops]

Hi all,
I have seen that SME Server 9 is released in RC1 version.

Do you know if it supports hard drive more than 2 TB ? It's based on centos 5.6 but I don't know if centos 5.6 support this capacity and may-be centos 5.6 is not enough to support it , customizing of sme server scripts are may-be necessary?

I have read some topics on these subjects, it seems the OS need lots of customizing to support hard drive with GPT table... : grub2, parted, etc...

[Stefano]

mmhh...

SME9 is last stable release
SME9 is based on CentOS 6

[TerryF]

Perhaps a little more reading of the wiki would be of benefit

[bpkheops]

ok my mistake, I mean centOS6.
If I ask on forum, it's because there is no information on wiki for SME Server 9 about that.

I have found by search that SME Server 8 don't support disk > 2 TB, that's why I ask for SME Server 9.

[Stefano]

I would say yes, of course..

in any case, you can check with google searching info for CentOS 6.X

[janet]

bpkheops

I have found by search that SME Server 8 don't support disk > 2 TB, that's why I ask for SME Server 9.

It depends what you mean by support. IIRC boot partitions larger than 2Tb are not supported, but you can have data drives larger than that. Did you search the forums as there have been a number of posts about it eg search on gpt. Also search bugzilla as there have been discussions there too. You can add hardware controllers to support thousands of Tb's.

SME9.0 final release is based on CentOS 6.5 so search support for that version of CentOS.

[bpkheops]

Ok I have tried to install SME 9 on one 4 TB hard drive. The install scripts works, it will create 2 partitions, so the install works with GPT table, but you can't boot on this disk. I have grub but it can't find kernel. My motherboard has efi bios (prerequisite to support booting from hd > 2 TB).

May-be when Grub2 will be used, it will work. I am going to look around in bugzilla.

I try to use my 4 TB hd as system and data disk, not only data disk.

If I find a solution, I will update this thread

[stephdl]

Fyi this howto exists....it is not as you want to do but it is a begining

[TerryF]

Two posts re CentOS 6 and drives >4tb.

Seems like it can be done BUT by a third party partioning tool like Gparted AND the mainboard must also support UEFI etc..

https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=44367

http://grokbase.com/t/centos/centos/1457k5f9vp/format-big-drives-4tb-in-the-installer

[bpkheops]

In fact, I did not success to install because I used one USB key.
The USB key is seen like a HDD.

The install scripts copy the files from the key to hard drive BUT the grub installer write on USB key, not on the hard drive!!

So I used a CDROM and now I have sme9 online!!!

SME 9 scripts work with 4 tb HDD and you can boot on it.

Thank to all for your replies.

[janet]

bpkheops

SME 9 scripts work with 4 tb HDD and you can boot on it.

Well that's good news.

Do you mean you just did a normal install from CD & did not run other drive management scripts etc.
So you now have a single 4Tb HDD with boot, system & data on the one 4Tb partition, is that correct ?

Please show us output of
df -h
&
cat /proc/mdstat

[bpkheops]

So you now have a single 4Tb HDD with boot, system & data on the one 4Tb partition, is that correct ?

correct.
I flag my hdd drive before as gpt table with parted, I don't know if it help to install.

[root@rangiroa ~]# cat /etc/e-smith-release
SME Server release 9.0

[root@rangiroa ~]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/main-root
                      3,6T  1,3T  2,2T  37% /
tmpfs                 1,8G     0  1,8G   0% /dev/shm
/dev/md0              243M   50M  181M  22% /boot

[root@rangiroa ~]# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md0 : active raid1 sda1[0]
      255936 blocks super 1.0 [2/1] [U_]

md1 : active raid1 sda2[0]
      3906629440 blocks super 1.1 [2/1] [U_]
      bitmap: 30/30 pages [120KB], 65536KB chunk

unused devices: <none>

[bunkobugsy]

Same results here, SME 9.1 installs fine on 4 TB hdd, creates 2 GPT partitions.
Warns about UEFI boot, but boots up ok (actually under Hyper-V on 2012R2),
and after messing around with parted (creating exactly same partitions as on
sda) managed to manually add and sync up the second physically mapped HDD.

Question is why doesn't manage disk redundancy from console handle correctly
GPT partitions. Is there anything that can be done, modify scripted action/event?

[CharlieBrady]

Question is why doesn't manage disk redundancy from console handle correctly
GPT partitions.

Because it uses sfdisk which doesn't know how to read or create GPT partition tables. It was written long ago.

Is there anything that can be done, modify scripted action/event?

The script could be re-written to use different tools (e.g. parted). You'd need to suggest that via bugzilla. But it'll only be implemented if someone wants to implement it, or if someone offers to pay to have it implemented.

[bunkobugsy]

http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9182

Thanks.