Problem with GPT and a 12TB RAID-5 partition

Garb Dowle garb.dowle at gmail.com
Fri Sep 10 09:45:48 CEST 2010


Hi again,

here is some more information:
I now could run "gdisk -l /dev/sda" on the Ubuntu 10.04, which I installed
with fai and which is not booting:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.5.1

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 23437369344 sectors, 10.9 TiB
Disk identifier (GUID): EF622145-AA15-406D-924E-EF9D566D5CF3
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 23437369310
Total free space is 29 sectors (14.5 KiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              63          409662   200.0 MiB   0700  primary
   2          409663         8798270   4.0 GiB     8200  primary
   3         8798271     23437369070   10.9 TiB    0700  primary
   4     23437369071     23437369310   120.0 KiB   EF02  primary
----------------------------------------------------------------------

There are a /boot-Partition on 1, a swap-Partiton on 2 and a /-partition on
3 with 11TByte. The fourth partition was added by setup-storage because of
the "gpt-bios" disclabel. Unlike the partition table generated by the Ubuntu
Installer-CD, the free space is only 29 sectors, the bios-partition is at
the end and its size is smaller.

I used following setup-storage config:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
# <type> <mountpoint> <size>   <fs type> <mount options> <misc options>

disk_config /dev/sda disklabel:gpt-bios
primary  /boot         200          ext3          defaults
primary  swap          4G          swap         defaults
primary  /               20G-         xfs           defaults
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The root-nfs, with which the Ubuntu 10.04 was installed has the backported
lenny kernel "2.6.32-bpo.3-amd64". Ubuntu 10.04 uses GRUB2, and the loader
gets installed with "grub-install /dev/sda".

P.S.: Installing Ubuntu 10.04 with partitions <2TB works like a charm, and
we are using it heavily at our company. Thank you for this very useful
software!


On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 5:44 PM, Garb Dowle <garb.dowle at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> if I select "gpt-bios" as disklabel in my setup-storage config, then, after
> installation of a Ubuntu 10.04 Server with FAI 3.3.5 it won't boot. After
> the BIOS-Screen, there will be only a blinking cursor on a blank screen, and
> nothing happens.
>
> Installing Ubuntu 10.04 with an Installation-CD on that system works fine.
> It recognizes my 12TB RAID-5 and adds a 1MByte BIOS Partition. The output of
> "gdisk -l /dev/sda" on that system shows:
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.5.1
>
> Partition table scan:
>   MBR: protective
>   BSD: not present
>   APM: not present
>   GPT: present
>
> Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
> Disk /dev/sda: 23437369344 sectors, 10.9 TiB
> Disk identifier (GUID): E206388F-7243-4EDF-BE0A-18E4F038DC38
> Partition table holds up to 128 entries
> First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 23437369310
> Total free space is 4029 sectors (2.0 MiB)
>
> Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
>    1            2048            4095   1024.0 KiB  EF02
>    2            4096          503807   244.0 MiB   0700
>    3          503808     23437367295   10.9 TiB    8E00
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I noticed, that setup-storage will add the BIOS Partition for GPT always as
> the last partition. I tried to place it at the beginning of the partition
> table, so that the partition table will look like that one generated from
> the Installer-CD, but I wasn't successful.
>
> Does somebody know how I can get this working?
>
> Thanks!
>
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