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Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2009 19:54:24 +0100
From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
To: Peter Steele <psteele@maxiscale.com>
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Cc: "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: How do I create large partitions in FreeBSD?
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On Tue, 8 Dec 2009 12:36:54 -0600, Peter Steele <psteele@maxiscale.com> wrote:
> We have 3U systems with 3Ware raid controllers configured to give
> us large 11TB logical drives. The diskinfo command shows this:
> [...]
> We want to create a BSD slice to cover the entire drive. My plan
> was to use the fdisk -I option:
> [...]
> How do we resolve this? We want a full size partition spanning
> the entire disk, and we need a scriptable solution since the
> configuration of these servers is handled through an automated
> process.

Why not directly formatting the whole device?

In the subject line, you wrote "large partition", so I assume
you won't want to boot from from the device, but use it as a
big storage area instead. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I am often using disks without slice if I don't boot from them,
but use them for storage.

	# newfs /dev/da1

would be the command to create a partition with file system
that covers the whole disk. It will be /dev/da1c (which is
/dev/da1), and you can easily mount it:

	# mount /dev/da1 /bigstorage

Of course, this solution is completely scriptable, given the
fact that you know which device to newfs.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...