i386/71408: bsdlabel refuses to label a 2.7TB array on a 3ware 9500-12 SATA controller

[Nick Evans]

>Number:         71408
>Category:       i386
>Synopsis:       bsdlabel refuses to label a 2.7TB array on a 3ware 9500-12 SATA controller
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       critical
>Priority:       high
>Responsible:    freebsd-i386
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Sun Sep 05 19:10:19 GMT 2004
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Nick Evans
>Release:        5.3-BETA2
>Organization:
Talkpoint Communications, Inc.
>Environment:
FreeBSD karmacoma.talkpoint.com 5.3-BETA2 FreeBSD 5.3-BETA2 #1: Sat Aug 28 21:29:15 UTC 2004     root at mack.dcsl.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

>Description:
3ware Escalade 9500-12 SATA controller with 12 Western Digital 250Mb SATA drives attached and a RAID5 array built at 2.7 Terabytes refuses to accept a label via bsdlabel for the entire partition. The following basic label:

# /dev/da0:
8 partitions:
#        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  c: 5859115008        0    unused        0     0         # "raw" part, don't edit

Gives the following error:

partition c: partition extends past end of unit
disklabel: partition c doesn't cover the whole unit!
disklabel: An incorrect partition c may cause problems for standard system utilities

Using fdisk or sysinstall to label the drive yields a ~700Gig partition as follows:

8 partitions:
#        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  c: 1157627904        0    unused        0     0         # "raw" part, don't edit
  e: 1155530752        0    4.2BSD     4096 32768     0 


DMESG from the controller:

da0 at twa0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <3ware Logical Disk 00 1.00> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-0 device 
da0: 100.000MB/s transfers
da0: 2860896MB (5859115008 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 364713C)

I have a 5.1-RELEASE system with a 3ware 8000 series controller and a 1.7 Terabyte array for which the handbook procedure for adding a dedicated disk worked perfectly.
>How-To-Repeat:
Handbook procedure for adding a dedicated disk to the system consistently returns the error. I've tried variations on partition sizes, made partition c smaller than the block size reported via dmesg on the controller, etc.
>Fix:
None known.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: