[parted-devel] Is XFS with Parted possible?

[Chris Hane]

I am trying to create a 3.2TB partition on my Raid 5.  Is there a 
document that could help?

If this is not the correct forum for a question of this nature, please 
point me in the right direction.

I have a 3ware 9500 controller and 8 *500GB sata drives configured into 
a single RAID 5 array.

I am running linux 2.6.16 with the 3ware drivers compiled into the kernel.

I've tried a couple of different means to create the partition and 
format the file system with xfs without success (or confidence that I 
haven't done something wrong).

1. PARTED

I've tried to use parted without any success.  Here is what I've tried 
and the errors I get.

 > parted
parted> mklabel gpt
parted> mkpart primary 0 3500GB
parted> quit

ok  - the partition now exists.  If I use ext2 everything works ok.

however, when I run

 > mkfs.xfs /dev/sda1

the file system is formated but is truncated to to 2TB.

Also, when I run parted again, I get the following error:

 > parted
   Error: Invalid Argument during seek for read on /dev/sda1

   The primary GPT table is corrupt, but the backup appears ok,
   so that will be used

After I exit parted and mount the partition I get an unable to mount 
error due to bad superblock error.

2. FDISK

I've tried fdisk on the array to create the partition; but it forces me 
enter the number of cylinders before letting me create the partition.  I 
enter the largest number of cylinders since I'm not sure how to 
calculate the correct cylinder number across an 8 disk RAID 5 array.

I then create the partition starting at 0 (or whatever the default was) 
and ending at 3500GB.

Once the partition is created this way, I can mkfs.xfs; but I'm a little 
hesitant to use this since I input and arbitrary cylinder number.

Thoughts on what to use for the correct cylinder count with fdisk?


Any advice/pointers on how to partition and format a 3.2TB raid 5 array 
would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris....