Problem with a large partition

[Kevin J. Cummings]

On 02/05/2010 04:42 PM, aragonx at dcsnow.com wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I have a 22TB partition that I would like to use.  I am using a 64bit CPU
> and used parted to create a partition and to format it.  It created an
> ext2 partition that I was in the process of converting to ext4.  This is
> where I hit a snag.  Here is the error I got:

*cough* *cough*  Disclaimer:  I don't have even 1TB in my largest system.

> # e2fsck -fDC0 /dev/sdb1
> e2fsck 1.41.9 (22-Aug-2009)
> Error determining size of the physical device: File too large

Looks like your partition is too large for an ext2 filesystem.

>From Wikipedia:

> Limits
> Max file size 	16 GiB - 64 TiB
> Max number of files 	1018
> Max filename length 	255 characters
> Max volume size 	2-32 TiB

Note the ranges in the max sizes.  If you chose the wrong information
when you configured (made) the partition initially, 22TB could be too
big.  Of course, the man page for mkfs.ext2 claims that if all you
specified on the mkfs command line was the partition size, it should
have chosen (heuristically) the proper configuration in the first place.

Why didn't you create the partition as an ext4 partition in the first
place?  (Apologies if this partition was already in use when you decided
to convert it....)

> Moving forward, I'm going to have to have e2fsck.  fsck appears to be
> provided by util-linux-ng.i686.  Shouldn't that be a 64bit version?

which fsck (what is its path?)  AFAIK, fsck is just a wrapper package
that calls the appropriate helper application once it determines the
target's fstype.

On my system (F11), /sbin/fsck is provided by e2fsprogs.x86_64

I do have util-linux-nq.x86_64 installed, but the only fsck support in
it is /sbin/fsck.cramfs.

> Here is some system information:
> 
> uname -a
> Linux ftp.temp.org 2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686 #1 SMP Sat Nov 7 21:41:45 EST
> 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Looks like your are only running a 32 Linux on your 64 bit CPU.  To that
end, you will only have 32 bit applications available to you.
That doesn't mean you are limited in your choice of partition sizes,
since the 32 bit software will still do the right thing to do the 64 bit
arithmetic for you.

> parted -l
> Disk /dev/sdb: 22.0TB
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
> Partition Table: gpt
> 
> Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name     Flags
>  1      17.4kB  22.0TB  22.0TB  ext4         primary
> 
> As always, any help would be appreciated.

I hope this has been helpful....

> ---
> Will Y.

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at rcn.com
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)