Re: how to use 5T RAID disk with NetBSD

On Fri, 7 Nov 2008, cngo <at> nmsu.edu wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have a 5 TB RAID array that is connected to a NetBSD host. The NetBSD
> host doesn't give me the correct information about the size of the RAID
> arrays (0 sec):
[snip]
> My questions are:
> - Can NetBSD 4.0 handle > 4T file system ?

Yes. I've used 4.5TB.

> - Do I need to make the kernel detect the harddisk correctly before using
> it ? If yes, how could I do that ? Do I need to rebuild the kernel ? If
> yes, what option needs to be changed in the GENERIC file ?

Yes, you'll need it to know about the right size. You need to be able to 
trust that it can actually address a disk of that size. I don't know why 
sd(4) is giving strange results, though.

> - How can I add the 4T hard disk to the existing NetBSD host? Disklabel
> doesn't calculate the size correctly and not allow me to partition the
> disk bigger than 2T.
> - Is there any tool similar to disklabel that handles the big disks.

You can use wedges which aren't that well documented. Alternatively, you 
can always cheat and just format the raw partition (d on x86), e.g. 
/dev/rsd1d. This will bypass disklabel entirely.

--

-- 
Stephen