Large filesystem woes

[dpk]

The resolution to this problem turned out to be enabling the 3Ware 9500S
"auto carving" option. This splits all partitions into 2TB chunks, which
are then presented to the OS as separate LUNs.

FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE's driver for the 3Ware card does not support multiple
LUNs, but the new driver (Common Layer) in 5.4-STABLE does. So if you're
running in to this same problem, here's a quick run down of what you need
to do:

1) Enable auto-carving in either the 3ware BIOS or in the 3dm web control
panel.

2) Delete and then re-create any RAID that is larger than 2TB, that you
want accessable from the OS. If you have sufficient drives available, you
can migrate the data to a new RAID, instead of deleting.

3) Install 5.4-RELEASE. sysinstall will show you a single 2TB device. Feel
free to use that device however you wish -- you can fill it to its
boundaries.

4) cvsup to 5.4-STABLE, make buildworld buildkernel installkernel, reboot.

5) You'll now see da1 and perhaps da2 and beyond, in dmesg or camcontrol
devlist.

If you should ever have to reboot into the 5.4-RELEASE GENERIC kernel, the
da1..n partitions will be unavailable. da0, however, will operate
normally. As such it is safe to use as a boot device. (For sanity's sake
it is probably best to create a much smaller slice or partition for system
files, but that's your decision).