Messages in this thread | | | From | John McCash <> | Subject | Multiterabyte Filesystem Support in 2.4.x on IA64? | Date | Fri, 1 Nov 2002 09:56:31 -0600 |
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Hi, I've searched through the lkml archives, and come up with conflicting information on the topic of large filesystem support in 2.4.x. What I'm interested in doing is a multiterabyte filesystem, using hardware RAID arrays, connected via SCSI to an Intel-based host. My research indicates that I MAY be able to do this if I use a 64 bit processor architecture, and use either ext3 or xfs on top of LVM for the filesystem. What's not clear currently, is whether I'm subject to the 2 terabyte file size and filesystem size limitation.
I suspect, but haven't been able to confirm, that these limits have been raised from 1TB to 2TB (for IA32) by recent 2.4.x kernel versions, largely by replacing signed values with unsigned ones. It's not at all clear whether these limits apply to IA64, however. Apparently they did at one time, as referenced by Peter Chubb's article on large filesystem support in 2.5.x in May of this year (www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/~peterc/lfs.html). I've also come across a reference from last year (http://lists.sistina.com/pipermail/linux-lvm/2001-September/008678.html that suggests there are device specific patches that need to be applied to make 64 bit sectoring work. It's not clear whether any or all of these have since made their way into the stable kernel tree.
So I'd appreciate if someone could explain what the current limits actually are, and assuming the 2TB filesystem and file size limits do apply in the generic case, are there any specific cases where they do not? If anyone knows a hardware/software combination that definitely does allow multiterabyte filesystem support, I'd love to hear about it. If the 2TB limits do still apply to IA64, are they expected to go away anytime in the near future of 2.4.x, or will I have to wait for 2.6? It will be in 2.6, right?
Please CC me on any replies, as I'm not subscribed to the list. I know the FAQ (http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/lkml/#s9-13) says that the limits do not apply to 64 bit CPUs, but as other information I've found is at odds with that, I'd like clarification. Thanks very much John McCash - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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