Drive Size Limit

[Kinghtflyer]

When installing 3.01 preload
RAID or Single
After initial message, "system installed" and subsequent reboot

Error : partition lenght of 5852345932 exceeds the msdos-partition-table-imposed maximum of 429497767295
Failed to create partition table
Repartition the disk to real geometry
End?

And its the end of the hunt
And I bouught 3, 3TB Seageates.

[Kumba]

You will need smaller drives to boot off of, or an EFI capable BIOS and EFI aware OS. I believe OpenSuSE v.12.1, which is what ViciBox v.4.0+ is based off of, is EFI aware, but I have never tried to really test it. ViciBox v.5.0, which is based on OpenSuSE v.12.3, is EFI enabled but again I have never tried or tested it. Usually when I need more then 2-TB accessible on a single server it is because I am configuring an archive server. In terms of an archive server, you are almost always better off having a smaller boot/OS volume that is separate from the big data store volume.

Anyways, the issue is that DOS partition tables can not logically address above 2TB of disk space. You will need to use GPT partition tables which are only read by EFI enabled motherboards and bootable by EFI enabled operating systems.

The other option is to return the hard drives and buy 2TB ones if you really don't want to have a boot set.

Looks like OpenSuSE needs to be 12.3 to really get EFI working: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:UEFI

[DomeDan]

As Kumba said, return them for 2TB drives, or if they wont accept that, then use the max size of the partition, 429497767295 as it tells you is max.

But as I wrote in the other topic, you could try to skip the partitionation part
and use parted to create a GPT partition table http://icesquare.com/wordpress/how-to-i ... -on-linux/ if its possible to continue after you skipped that part then the installer should be able to create a ext4 file-system on that partition
I can see that parted is included in my install of vicibox so I guess its available in the installation process, and parted started support GPT early so your version probably supports it.

[Kinghtflyer]

Thanks everyone, perhaps my misfortune will prevent some other soul from losing time trying to get 3TB.

[Kinghtflyer]

I recently returned and replaced 3TB with 2TB drives, and still have a problem.
Raid or No Raid, the partitioner cannot create the swap space.

[DomeDan]

What happens when the "partitioner cannot create the swap space"?
also run 'dmesg' in an other tty after after the problem occur, and post the output here

[Kinghtflyer]

After Zeroing the Drives I was able to install swap space correctly.

After configuring the RAID again the installer presented me with 3 selections to destroy drive data.
The first 2 were the physical SATAs
And the third was the Logical Array.
After correctly selecting the 3rd selection things went okay. (I probably shot myself in the foot before by selecting one of the physical satas.

The only caveat is I get 'failed to execute 'lib/udev/vol_id' 'vol_id --export /dev/dm - no such file or directory.

I will probably continue to get that message for free at boot time until I figure out how to suppress it.

I will configure a carrier and assign a campaign Monday. .... Stay Tuned.

[DomeDan]

failed to execute 'lib/udev/vol_id' 'vol_id --export /dev/dm - no such file or directory.

Never seen that before, you didn't select any raid stuff in the OpenSuSE installer right? (only in bios)

[Kumba]

I wouldn't have used the BIOS/Motherboard RAID. I stick with Linux RAID or real Hardware RAID. The motherboard/BIOS raids are usually just problematic. You will find out what I mean if your motherboard ever dies or hiccups.

[williamconley]

unless you have a spare identical motherboard and took a photo of your setup so you can match it identically ... you're On-Board raid becomes useless when the Motherboard it resides on smokes. be prepared to jump on ebay and overnight an identical motherboard and pray you can match settings to wake the raid back up.

[DomeDan]

Ain't we talking mirroring? dont need a raid setup to boot any of those drives right?

Didn't know regular motherboard raids could be that bad, then I'm on the linux-raid side,
have been playing with that a little and it seamed very reliable, even did a re-install and the stripe raid could be accessed afterwards, but remember to backup the md (mdadm) config file

[williamconley]

mirroring on a motherboard with proprietary RAID does not resolve how to access the RAID when the motherboard dies. Another motherboard will not access the drives in precisely the same manner and the entire RAID then becomes inaccessible until you purchase the same motherboard. This also applies to megaRAID and any other standard RAID card, but those are independent and the RAID card never dies. Even if it does die, the replacement card would be acquired in the same manner as the original ... whereas most people have no idea where to get a matching motherboard for whatever system they bought. The motherboard is rarely specified. Even if you purchase an identical system from the same supplier, the motherboard May Be Different. So ... eBay! But with a RAID card, you can just get another one from the same manufacturer through the same channel and you're good.

Software RAID, on the other hand, will render a heavily-used system useless during the heaviest load. As a rule this is NOT the time for a system to "go down" and one cannot predict the down-moment or preview it unless you exercise due-diligence (Best Practices) and load test your system. Since most rooms neither perform a restore on their backups (proving the backup/restore process will actually work) nor load-test their systems in advance of a ramp-up to see if they will fail ... software RAID invariably causes a really bad day when it crumbles.

Software RAID is marvelous for a low-usage web server or FTP server. But for a heavily-used Vicidial sql database server or dialer ... it can cause a really bad day. LOL (Much worse than NO RAID with a good, proven backup.)