UFS2 with 4TB disk _totally absurd_

[Scott Long]

Eric Anderson wrote:
> Scott Long wrote:
> 
>> Ensel Sharon wrote:
>>
>>>> The FDISK and bsdlabel schemes simply cannot deal with >2TB.  You'll
>>>> need to either put your filesystem directly on the storage device
>>>> without and slices/labels, or use GPT to create logical partitions.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2TB filesystems are _not large_.  FreeBSD should expect 2-4TB 
>>> filesystems
>>> to be in common use in peoples _living rooms_, never mind in the 
>>> office or
>>> datacenter.
>>>
>>> So 5.x was a total wash in terms of UFS2 and snapshots, largefiles, 
>>> etc.,
>>> 6.0 still doesn't have working filesystem quotas or snapshots, and it
>>> seems, doesn't support modern (circa 2004) hard drives.
>>>
>>> Maybe a little less time working on FreeBSD 23.0 ... ?
>>>
>>
>> What are you talking about?  UFS2, the filesystem, supports storage
>> volumes up to 2^63 blocks in size, and filesystems themselves of
>> more than 2^53 blocks in size.  There is no 2TB limit in UFS2, and I've
>> personally created filesystems that are indeed much larger than that..
>> These sizes were supported in 2004, and they are supported in 2006.
>> What is limited is the FDISK and BSDLABEL formats, which were designed
>> in the early 80's to handle up to 2^32 blocks.  Neither of these prevent
>> you from creating a large filesystem.  Maybe you're looking to have a
>> single large volume to hold both your boot filesystem and your data
>> filesystem?  That's generally a bad idea since it puts more things into
>> the path of a failure.  Try doing what most people do, which is to boot
>> off of a 2 disk mirror (go big and get 500GB disks if you want) and have
>> your data on a separate array that is more redundant and doesn't need to
>> use the above partition formats.
>>
>> Alternatively, find a PC that understands how to boot off of GPT
>> partitions, and use that format.  It's not FreeBSD's fault that the PC
>> BIOS uses the FDISK format.  Go complain to IBM and Microsoft for not
>> having the foresight to future-proof their partition format 25 years
>> ago.
> 
> 
> Now if only fsck could be fixed to actually be able to fsck a full >2TB 
> filesystem with a reasonable amount of memory, without swapping forever. 
>  Even with journaling, you still need to be able to run fsck in case of 
> very hard errors.
> 
> 
> Eric
> 
> 
> 

Yup, that's a problem.  It's on my TODO list.

Scott