Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 08:19:57 -0600 From: "Bruce DeVault" <internal@intechsoft.net> To: <intrico@pacbell.net>, "Greg Lehey" <grog@lemis.com> Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Large Hard Disks Message-ID: <003d01bf4187$4f6c9610$0c01a8c0@wkbruce> References: <NDBBJHGEHKFPLCHNOLINOELFCAAA.intrico@pacbell.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
I ran into very similar, but not exactly the same problems with my large hard drive installation a few weeks ago, and posed similar questions here. My problem was that I had two 34 GB drives, and couldn't use the standard tools to fdisk and diskslice them without getting a failure on newfs that said "read only filesystem". Although the responses I got were generally helpful, they were mostly along the lines of "there are no known problems with this" so it must be something I'm doing wrong. After reading all the man pages and doing everything verbatim according to the instructions, with the right geometry, etc. many times, I was still unable to succeed even though Win98 could fdisk and format the things immediately. I eventually gave up trying to install them individually, and succeeded in getting them to work with vinum, and newfs succeeded on the collective volume, although I was never able to use their full size. I ended up having to make the filesystems smaller than the full size in order to make FreeBSD able to newfs them without failing. This lengthy and exhausting experience combined with yours and another similar question posed here leads me to believe there is a real software problem that hasn't been addressed. In the mean time, I simply won't install drives larger than 17 GB (which I have several of, and install via exactly the same means with no problems whatsoever) until I hear that the problem has been resolved. I really wish I could be of more help in resolving this problem, instead of just complaining about it, but unfortunately, I can't afford to be without these drives to keep testing it over and over - I had to get them going because they were needed for important work, even if it meant using them at less than their full size. I believe between the two 34 gig drives I ended up getting about 58 usable gigabytes, and although the whole experience scares me about their reliability, they've tested successfully for over a week in heavy usage. Hopefully someone will get a grip on this one. If there's anything I can do to help, other than taking my drives offline again (which I know might be the only helpful thing) I'd be glad to do it. Bruce DeVault InTech Software > I'm letting you know that the install succeeded, after following your > suggestion, > and reducing the /usr partition to approximately 25 GB. This time through > it > paused for about two minutes with no drive activity saying that it was > "creating filesystems on wd0". Wow. I'm mystified though, as far as the > reasoning > here is concerned. Might there by any chance exist a URL which explains, or > perhaps > something I'm overlooking in "The Complete FreeBSD"? (That way, I might be > able to > avoid a lot of trial and error in getting the /usr partition as large as the > exact > number of megabytes possible, without generating the panic.) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?003d01bf4187$4f6c9610$0c01a8c0>