The installer will not let me partition a 1.1TB array (8x160GB disks, RAID5) behind a 3w-7850 controller. I have tried with both errata images; they solve other problems and both allow me to get further into the installation. Now I get no indication of any errors in the kernel log. Instead I get the following in a dialog box: No such file or directory during read on /tmp/sda The kernel logs on VT4 look normal except for this: <4>SCSI device sda: -2053770239 512-byte sectors (47981MB) Obviously it's overflowing. I'm used to this, because it also happens on a 700MB array I have running Red Hat 7.1, but it didn't cause any problems with the installation there. I no longer have 7.1 around to install on the new machine. Choosing "ignore" from the dialog box causes the above message to again appear in the kernel log. Then the dialog box reappears; after several tries, I get the "no devices found for installation" box. I have verified (from the shell on VT2) that /tmp/sda exists as a block device with major 8 and minor 0 as I'd expect.
Some further information: On VT2, running fdisk /tmp/sda results in: Unable to read /tmp/sda I verified again that /tmp/sda does indeed exist, and to be doubly sure I did "mknod /tmp/blah b 8 0" and received the same error message when trying to fdisk that.
What happens if you create /tmp/sda and try to run parted on it ?
I didn't realize that parted was available in the initial install image. It runs and gives a prompt. There is a note about the geometry being 139508/255/63 and cylinder 1024 ending at 8032.499M. However, it doesn't want to do much of anything. If, for instance, I do "mklabel msdos" I get: read failed: No such device read failed: No such device Error: No such file or directory during read on /tmp/sda Retry Ignore Cancel? I hope this helps.
Arjan -- do you know of anything specific to the boot kernel that might be causing problems here?
Some more information for you: I brought up a RAID5 array with only three 160GB disks, to try and determine whether the problem relates to the size of the array. The installation works fine on the resulting 320GB /dev/sda. 3ware has a driver out that's even newer than what is in current kernels (1.02.00.019, I think). Unfortunately I have no idea how to make the new driver available to the installer.
Sounds like the kernel driver is having problems with something that large
Several linux drivers (and it seems the 3ware too) have a 1 Tb limit ;(
The limit seems to be in the kernel on the boot floppies. I know that newer kernels have no trouble with an array this large. In any case, Skipjack-beta1 installs fine on this machine, so you can resolve the issue. But this is supposed to be a production machine, and running the beta makes me unconfortable. We'll see how it survives stress testing.
I suggest that this be resolved, since this particular problem is fixed in the betas (and I'm sure you want to keep the unresolved bug count down). Is that "resolved current" or "resolved rawhide"?