SUMMARY: Question about 4 GByte partitions on Sun Sparc 10

From: Mona Wong (mona@szechuan.UCSD.EDU)
Date: Thu Jul 13 1995 - 21:58:08 CDT


Hi sun managers:

[Original posting]

> I'm getting a 4 GByte disk for my Sun Sparc 10. It is my
> understanding that SunOS 4.1.4 supports filesystems upto
> 2 Gbytes, right?
>
> I can break up the disk to two 2 Gbyte filesystems, but is
> there a way to keep it as one large partition?
>
> Please send your thoughts/suggestions to monawong@ucsd.edu since
> I am not on this mailing list. I will post a summary to the list.
>
> Thanks!
> Mona Wong
> UCSD

    Yes, SunOS 4.1.x only support filesystems up to 2 Gbytes. To get
    around this, most respondent suggested using SunSoft's Online Disk Suite
    which will allow me to concatenate the two 2 Gbyte partitions into one.

    Other suggestions:

    johnh@gerbil.umds.ac.uk:

        c) get a Solaris 2 server. Then the Sunos machines can see the big
           partitions, although the gnu df and du must be used.

    reedwv@expu79.stp.xfi.bp.com:
        You can mount a 4 Gb filesystem which has been exported from a Solaris
        2.x system because nfs doesn't have the 2Gb limit.

    spr@myxa.com:
        there is usually no real advantage to a larger filesystem - the unit
        of recoverability is the filesystem, and it becomes more complex and
        time-consuming to restore such a large object.

    fhb@kestnbaum.com:

        I just asked Sun about this question... you can do it, but it is not
        supported/recommended by Sun.

    poffen@San-Jose.ate.slb.com:
        There is still a limit that no single file can exceed 2Gb though.

    mike@trdlnk.com:
        If you install Online DiskSuite (an extra cost product from Sun),
        you will be able to create file systems up to 1 TeraByte underly
        SunOS 4.1.x. However individual files are still limited to 2 GB.
        My understanding is that the SunOS 4.1.4 kernel already supports
        the >2 GB filesystems, but you need the special versions of newfs,
        fsck, etc. that come with DiskSuite in order to actually use them

        Solaris 2 supports large file systems without doing anything special,
        so that's probably a more cost effective solution if you are able to
        upgrade.

    negativl@netcom.com:
        At the moment, we've got some 9GB disks on a Solaris 2 box, and
        4.1.x automount seems to handle it pretty well, the only problem
        being the inability to monitor disk space from the 4.1.x boxes. We
        may still end up having to go with Online Disk suite, just because
        we can't run 2.x on all boxes yet.

    ldr@taec.com:
        I use version 1.0 and it works for me and all we are doing here.
        It's very simple to install and it will alow you to "see" much
        larger file systems.

    Thanks to the following people who responded:
    Micheal Albert (albert@esther.rad.tju.edu)
    Fred H. Berns (fhb@kestnbaum.com)
    John Doppert (jdoppert@pacesetter.com)
    Bruce Harrell (bruce@digit.com)
    John Hearns (johnh@gerbil.umds.ac.uk)
    Paul Margozzi (margozzi@MediaVis.com)
    Mikey (mikey@truman.lanl.gov)
    Marc Newman (mknewman@chain.ssctr.bcm.tmc.edu)
    Russ Poffenberger (poffen@San-Jose.ate.slb.com)
    Lawrence Randall (lxranda@lookout.ecte.uswc.uswest.com)
    Bill Reed (reedwv@expu79.stp.xfi.bp.com)
    Jack Reiner (jjr@edi-nola.com)
    Larry Ridenour (ldr@taec.com)
    Kevin Sheehan (Kevin.Sheehan@uniq.com.au)
    Stephen (spr@myxa.com)
    Michael Sullivan (mike@trdlnk.com)
    Raymond Wong (negativl@netcom.com)
    Chris Zanelli (chrisz@ind.tansu.com.au)

Mona Wong
UCSD



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:10:29 CDT