Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758278AbYCYQdw (ORCPT ); Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:33:52 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752230AbYCYQdm (ORCPT ); Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:33:42 -0400 Received: from mexforward.lss.emc.com ([128.222.32.20]:27096 "EHLO mexforward.lss.emc.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751830AbYCYQdl (ORCPT ); Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:33:41 -0400 Message-ID: <47E91EE2.9080801@emc.com> Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:48:50 -0400 From: Ric Wheeler Reply-To: ric@emc.com User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 (Windows/20080213) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Matthew Wilcox CC: Mark Lord , Linus Torvalds , Jens Axboe , Jeff Garzik , Tejun Heo , Greg KH l , Andrew Morton , Linux Kernel , IDE/ATA development list , linux-scsi Subject: Re: What to do about the 2TB limit on HDIO_GETGEO ? References: <47E875AD.1000901@rtr.ca> <47E8FF58.8050209@rtr.ca> <47E90CDA.600@emc.com> <20080325153423.GD16721@parisc-linux.org> In-Reply-To: <20080325153423.GD16721@parisc-linux.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-PMX-Version: 4.7.1.128075, Antispam-Engine: 2.5.1.298604, Antispam-Data: 2007.8.30.53115 X-PerlMx-Spam: Gauge=, SPAM=0%, Reason='EMC_BODY_PROD_1+ -3, EMC_FROM_0+ -3, __CT 0, __CTE 0, __CT_TEXT_PLAIN 0, __HAS_MSGID 0, __MIME_TEXT_ONLY 0, __MIME_VERSION 0, __SANE_MSGID 0, __USER_AGENT 0' X-Tablus-Inspected: yes X-Tablus-Classifications: public X-Tablus-Action: allow Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1626 Lines: 36 Matthew Wilcox wrote: > On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 10:31:54AM -0400, Ric Wheeler wrote: >> I think that there are many embedded applications (lots of them linux based) >> which have large amounts of storage behind low power, low cost 32 bit CPU's. >> >> Think of the home/small office NAS boxes that you can get from bestbuy or >> other big box stores. Those devices today have 4 S-ATA drives (each of >> which can be 1TB in size). >> >> Also, if you have a very low end box, it can still access really large >> storage >> over iSCSI or a SAN which will present as a local, large device. > > Don't those devices run into trouble with fsck? The amount of memory > you need to fsck a device is obviously going to depend on the filesystem, > but it has to grow with device size, and I'm not sure that 4GB is enough > virtual address space to fsck 2TB. Absolutely - they more or less hit a stonewall once the disk has any trouble and you need to fsck. On the other hand, this might be merciful since on 64 bit boxes, we will let you run the fsck and watch it run for a week or so before you despair ;-) On a serious note, fsck time tends to track more the number of active inodes, so you can fsck a large file system if you use it to store large files (especially if you use a file system with dynamic inode creation or something like the uninitialized ext4 inodes). ric -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/