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On Tue, 2006-06-06 at 11:27 -0500, Rob Sell wrote:
Thanks Carl. Looks like that was the problem, msdos label. had to use parted to repartition and relabel to gpt everything seems kosher now. its too bad 'partitioner' in yast2 doesn't give an option to do this. I hosed my system the first time trying to get by without fully understanding how parted works.
Just caught this thread. Yes, you can_not_ use the Legacy BIOS/DOS Disk Label (what Microsoft called "Basic" disk in NT 5.0/2000+) for >2.2TB (>2TiB) partitions. You _must_ use another disk label, such as Intel's General Partition Table (GPT). Inside the GPT you can then slice partitions as you wish, or even put in other disk labels such as BSD, LDM ("Dynamic"), LVM, etc... But understand you _can_ have boot-time issues _before_ the OS kernel boots. On a PC, the legacy BIOS Int13h Disk Services _only_ knows of the traditional 4 slice design (which Microsoft calls "Primary" in the "Basic" disk approach). So anything in the first sector of the disk -- the Master Boot Record (MBR) on the PC -- must load any additional support to do more.
I did have a bit of trouble with grub, had to switch to lilo, grub didn't seem to like the huge disk parameters just kept talking about disk params out of range.
LILO and GRUB have different approach. LILO says "boot this raw sector address" -- hence why you must install that setting before you can boot. LILO doesn't require any "advanced support" -- it only maps the OS' disk organization and device to the "raw sector address" in the bootstrap. LILO couldn't care less what organization is used -- it just has a "raw sector address" to boot. Newer LILO versions support full LBA48 addressing. GRUB says "let me read the disk and find out what I can see" -- hence why it can be changed at boot. Unfortunately, this requires that GRUB know how to read different disk labels. GRUB has yet to add support into its MBR loader for Intel GPT or Microsoft LDM disk labels. I haven't been tracking its support of Linux LVM or LVM2 either. Until a dynamic loader like GRUB gains more support for these disk labels, you're stuck either using LILO -- _or_ reserving 1-2 slices (Primary Partitions) of the legacy BIOS/DOS Disk Label for a /boot partition. For Linux systems, I typically create 3 Primary Partitions (83) of 2GB/each, and then a LVM (8E). I actually only use 1 of the Primary Partitions, and leave the other 2 in case I need to load a 'recovery' install or other 'test' install. On servers, I typically reduce Partition 1 to 256MB and load a dd image of DR-DOS 7.03 on it (for firmware updates that must run from DOS). On dual-boot Linux and Windows (NT5.0/2000+) systems, I create 2 Primary Partitions of 2GB/each, then I create a LDM Partition (42) and then a LVM (8E). Windows goes into the LDM and Linux goes into the LVM, except /boot. I still like to reserve Partition 1 for DR-DOS 7.03 -- you never know when you need a "Real86 DOS" boot for a firmware update or diagnostics. -- Bryan J. Smith Professional, technical annoyance mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org http://thebs413.blogspot.com ------------------------------------------------------- Illegal Immigration = "Representation Without Taxation" -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com