Maximum drive size for Terastation 3400

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Creating journal (262144 blocks): mkfs.ext4: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read
        while trying to create journal

Looks like the format failed, I must have been wrong about those ext4 defaults (even though I did check on one of my systems)

try:

Code Select Expand

mkfs.ext4 -O 64bit /dev/md10

[oxygen8]

TeraStation 3400
Marvell Armada XP MV78230, Dual-Core
Supports 32-bit instruction set
from
https://www.marvell.com/content/dam/marvell/en/public-collateral/embedded-processors/marvell-embedded-processors-armada-xp-mv78230-hardware-specifications-2014-07.pdf



I had the same problem with my LS-QVL
You can not format bigger volumes then 16TB with a 32bit cpu.
I am able to assemble a 21TB raid with mdadm but i am not able to format it with XFS, EXT.

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Armada XP supports lpae (Large Physical Address Extensions), we're trying to confirm whether LPAE allows that limit to be exceeded. we've got it running an LPAE enabled kernel and appear to have successfully written to areas > 16TB using dd. Assuming we did that right, it shows it was able to access areas past 16TB for r/w.

kane88 is working on formatting it with the options necessary to support > 32bit addresses.

If this works it would only apply to the ts3000 running Debian but is still interesting.

[Kane88]

I will give it another try over the weekend.  I have to reinstall the OS again.

I wish debian would update their installer, enabling lpae so that these drives could be formatted correctly- during the install process. 

It seems to me, the installer should find what kind of processor is being used,  and enable ALL necessary support for it during the setup, so that this whole formatting issue can be avoided.

This reminds me of the 137gb issue with Windows XP/2000 back in the day, and boy would people lose data if 48bit lba wasn't enabled.   That said, even if this does work- how trustworthy will it be remains to be seen...

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If this works I could make an ts3400 installer image which boots the LPAE kernel and tweaks the ext4 defaults to allow the format to work. That said, I imagine we'll just add some notes to the wiki on how to do it after the install since maintaining a separate installer for once configuration of one device is a lot of work. I imagine Debian made the same decision when they used the regular armhf installer for LPAE and non-LPAE devices.

I just realized I have a TS3400D and enough unused drives to make an 18TB RAID0 array. I'll give a try in the coming days and see how it goes.

[Kane88]

Ok, I reloaded the OS again.  Still having trouble, even with the new command.
I hope you fare better with your 18TB array.  Hopefully there is a way to format arrays that are larger than 16TB.

root@debian:/home/kane88# mkfs.ext4 -O 64bit /dev/md10
mke2fs 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
/dev/md10 contains a xfs file system
Proceed anyway? (y,N) y
Creating filesystem with 5826563584 4k blocks and 364161024 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 820821cf-2489-413a-8b34-980d45e01f0c
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
        4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968,
        102400000, 214990848, 512000000, 550731776, 644972544, 1934917632,
        2560000000, 3855122432, 5804752896

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (262144 blocks): mkfs.ext4: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read
        while trying to create journal
root@debian:/home/kane88#

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I gave it a try, I wasn't able to write past the 16TB mark using dd. I also got the same error as you did trying to format the array. I'm thinking the previous dd test was invalid for some reason. It seems the 16TB limit applies under the lpae kernel after all.

[oxygen8]

"40-bit Large Physical Address Extensions (LPAE) addressing up to 1 TB of RAM"
from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A15

You are trying to work with 20TB

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Right, a 32-bit address space limits you to 4GB (2^32 bytes)of ram or 16TB (2^32 4K blocks) block devices. LPAE gives you a 40-bit address space allowing 1TB (2^40 bytes) of ram. I wondered if this meant we could address 4096TB (2^40 4k blocks) block devices.

That doesn't seem to be how it works. I don't know if LPAE only applies to memory addresses or it's some other limitation.