32bit filesystem limitations

[Andrei Kolu]

Ivan Voras wrote:
> Andrei Kolu wrote:
>   
>> Ivan Voras wrote:
>>     
>>> 2009/3/25 Barry Pederson <bp at barryp.org>:
>>>
>>>  
>>>       
>>>> Is there any reason not to skip labeling/partitioning and use da1
>>>> directly?
>>>>  Just newfs it and mount it.  I've done this with a couple large Areca
>>>> arrays with no ill effect so far.
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> Nope, no practical reason. Skip the partitioning if you don't need it.
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>> Finally: # newfs /dev/da1
>>     
>
> (note: no soft-updates here)
>
>   
Oops. OK, I can enable it next boot from rc.local:

tunefs -n enable /data


>> a# df -H
>> Filesystem     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
>> .....
>> /dev/da1       3.4T    4.1k    3.1T     0%    /data
>> .....
>>
>> Mission accomplished. But why sysinstall plays such an ugly game? This
>> problem should be announced as a bug.
>>     
>
> Because sysinstall only knows about fdisk and bsdlabel partition types,
> and those have a fixed format defined in the old days. You get the same
> problem with basically all operating systems today except latest
> versions of Windows Server which uses GPT by default.
>
> (but simply always using GPT by default isn't a good option because it
> will interfere with people wanting to multi-boot other operating systems).
>   
I forgot to try ZFS on that particular server- maybe that one would be 
better alternative? I have experience with ZFS on terabyte sized volumes 
and had no ill effects so far- what about really large filesystems? I 
know that ZFS is considered experimental.