ext3 partition size limit? ["solved"]

lululog · n00b Joined: 05 May 2003 Posts: 22 Location: Germany

Hi

I just wanted to create a new partiition with a size of about 180 GB on my new harddisk. First I formated it with ext3 and everything worked till I tried to mount the partition. Just got a message telling me that no ext3 filesystem was found. mke2fs -j reported no errors. I can't imagine ext3 not beeing able to handle a partition of this size, so do I need a special option to mke2fs or something?
Also tried Reiserfs and it works just fine with this partition. Any hints ?

D. M. P. inc · Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2003 3:40 am Post subject:

check ur /etc/fstab ????

can u add more info on whats wrong?? u added a ext3 partition or ur 1st time installting???
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lululog · n00b Joined: 05 May 2003 Posts: 22 Location: Germany

Ok, here's what I did. Before, the 180 GB were split up in two partitions of about 90 GB each in an extended partiton. Now I decided I want to have one big drive, so I removed the two partitions from fstab, rebooted and changed the partition table to look like this :

lululog · n00b Joined: 05 May 2003 Posts: 22 Location: Germany

I finally found the time to look into my problem again and found the reason form my troubles. Here's the whole story:

I use an old K6-3 as my server at home. I decided to buy a new 200GB Maxtor disk after I read on the net that it's no problem to use the whole capacity with linux, also with older chipsets. Initially everything worked fine. I transfered my gentoo installation to the new disk and created a partition for /home of about 100GB. This setup worked for about 2 months, then I needed the remaining capacity. So I created another partition of about 90GB. At the same time I noticed that DMA was not enabled for the drive so I enabled it.
After those changes the trouble started. After a few hours my filesystems got corrupted an the ext3 journal abortet turning the drive into read-only. It seemed to me that when something got written on the new partition something was destroyed on the old one. So my first thougts were that I somehow managed to create overlaping partitions, and thats why I created one 200 GB partition.
I wasn't able to mount this partition when it was formated with ext3 but it worked with reiserfs. But again I got a corrupted filesystem.
Today I searched the net again for my problem and finally found the answer. It seems like the ALI chipset on my mobo doesn't support LBA48 (which is needed to access more than 137GB) with DMA enabled, only in PIO mode.
So basically I'm f****d. Either I can only use the first 137GB of my disk or the whole disk with slow PIO-Mode access. Hope I can find an old board with VIA chipset which hopefully works.

The problem was discussed in the kernel mailinglist: http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2003/Sep/0577.html

Pete_Keller · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 3:33 pm Post subject:

lululog,

Or you might try getting a new controller card that will allow you to use the whole disk at dma speeds.

Pete
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lululog · n00b Joined: 05 May 2003 Posts: 22 Location: Germany

Yeah, I already thought about that today.

I got the disk running in my router (also a K6 but with Via chipset), so I have to decide wether I buy a new controller card (easy way) or just change the two motherboards (cheap way). Because I'm rather busy at the moment I'll probably buy a new controller card. Any suggestions for cards you had good experiences with are welcome

Lululog

secondshadow · Guru Joined: 23 Jun 2003 Posts: 362

I have a Maxtor UltraATA133 controler card and it works like a dream. Based on the Promise UltraATA133 TX2 chip I think...I'll have to look. I got it free with my 120GB HD I bought from Costco. Best part is if I really felt like it and found the reciept, I could take it back, and get the $160 GB drive thanks to our return policy

Anywho, that chip works great with linux.