NASLite Network Attached Storage

I'm using the Adaptec 2610SA SATA RAID controller with four 400gb Seagate drives. I'm creating a RAID-5 with the four drives and when I get to the NASLite "format" portion of the installation, I instantly get a "format failed" message (and I mean immediately).

If I repeat the process with three drives, the NASLite "format" works fine. I can't help but think that there is an overflow in some calculation causing it to break?

Here are the numbers as reported by Adaptec BIOS:
4x400GB = 1455GB total -> 1091GB raid-5
3x400GB = 1091GB total -> 745GB raid-5

If there is some other test you guys would like me to try (to confirm the problem), let me know. Thx...

Hm,

That will need a closer look.

Hi there

I am having the same problem with a 3-Ware 3W-7850 raid card. 5x 320GB drives. Array creates OK but NASlite gives an error the instant I try and format it.

Love NASlite
Love Server elements

My wife loves all the data on the server

Love a quick reply he he he

Any update on the 1tb array formatting?

Hi All

As a test I booted Mandrake Move Live. It found the SCSI drive but noted sector overlaps. Also when I tried to mount the drive it would only allow formatting up to 1TB not 1.2TB that I have installed.

Does this mean that the Linux kernal only supports up to 1TB?

If this is the case I will use 1 of my drives as a hot spare and have less capacity (4x320 Raid 5 = 960GB).

I would really rather use all 5 drives (1.28TB) so if a fix is in the works I would love to know. I would hate to transfer 600GB to the new array only to have to rebuild it when/if a fix comes.

Cheers

Wal

Looks like LBD support is missing. that may also be caused by incorrect copmpiler settings and is partly set by the used library.

2.6 kernels are supported for over 1 and 2 TB. Also, this requires use of the GPT partition table format to go past the 2TB limit.

mkfs.ext2 and friends should be able to format this fine when compiled with LBD support.

LBD == Large Block Device.

Only distributors ever poked at breaching the 2TB limit on 2.4 kernels and RedHat has a 1TB limit for all RHEL versions except 4 (which is 2.6).

Keep in mind, most hardware raid cards have a logical drive limit and won't format over, my LSI Megaraid SATA 150-6 has a 2TB logical drive limit.

I'm going to pick up 2 more 300g drives to push my raid 5 over a terrabyte and see if it formats. If it doesn't, we have some internal software issue, if it does, then I would imagine the end users cards have limitations.

I'll also try and mark up a howto on expanding raid drive setups in NASLite while i'm on this.

Thanks Ralph.

I Look forward to the results.

Wal

OK, I can *confirm* NASLite-2 does not format volumes over 1TB. It appears our sfdisk binary does not correctly partition the volume and therefore won't allow a format.

The good news is I formatted a 1.1TB volume under Slackware 10.2 and rebooted into NL2 and everything else worked,NL2 see's the volume and mounts it, fsck, appy journal, read/writing files all work as well.

Until we release a fix for this, I suggest getting the Slackware 10.2 Disk 1 cdrom, boot using the raid kernel, then fdisk your raid volume with 1 single partition for the entire disk. Format the disk with ext2, reboot and appy a journal to convert it to ext3 from NL2.

Thanks Ralph!

I am up and running. I needed a quick internet crash course on linux fdisk and formatting but all is now go!

Wal

As per Ralph's method above I just created a 2TB array no problems.

What needs to be clarified is that the Slackware part is very small ie just creating the partition using fdisk /dev/sda.

The rest is done thru naslite v2.

FYI:

This problem has been fixed for the upcoming v2.02 release.

Any chance of building arrays larger than 2TB ?

The 3ware controller I use has a limit of 2TB.
Its documentation states that this is related to limits of operating systems in using larger than 2TB drives.

some controllers say they can build arrays larger then 2TB. I don't know much about the linux core or naslite in particuler, so I'm curious if it will be supported or not.