From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261386AbVFNW3D (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Jun 2005 18:29:03 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261387AbVFNW3D (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Jun 2005 18:29:03 -0400 Received: from alpha.polcom.net ([217.79.151.115]:19171 "EHLO alpha.polcom.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261386AbVFNW27 (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Jun 2005 18:28:59 -0400 Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 00:28:53 +0200 (CEST) From: Grzegorz Kulewski To: John Duthie Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: SATA - SCSI Partition limit In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 15 Jun 2005, John Duthie wrote: > Problem: > Need to simulate CDs shares on a linux/samba File server... has a > 120 GB SATA drive in there ... > > ( linux-2.6.10 ) > > long story ... > Shares had the wrong size for the evil VB program > (Tried mounting *.iso via loopbak - it didn't like it ) > Windows boxes that work just have lots of 700 mb partitions ( 4 > x extended with 6 or 7 logical in each ) > SO i thought "I know I'll just make lots of partitions" oops , > SCSI sub system only allows 15 Drives > So now I could "Boot 2.6.11ac7 on it and specify the boot option > "all-generic-ide" " which worked wonders last time i had a problem > (Thanks Alan) because ide will allow more than 15 partitions. > But the machine is now about 500 km away from me and changing a > linux system to boot from scsi to ide over ssh is not my idea of fun, > 1 typo and I've got a long drive ahead :-(, > are there any hard reasions for the 15 partition limit on scsi ( > other than lots of dev files ) > > how much work would a patch to halve the number of /dev/sd? files > and double the /dev/sd?[12]? files ( same number of devices > minor/major ) ? > > I'm sure this will be a problem more people have as the SATA drives > get bigger....... Use device-mapper or some tool that uses it (evms). You will be able to have really big amount of partitions on SCSI or SATA drive. I used about 30 partitions once. You make them normally with fdisk and then at boot evms will take care of them. Just remember to use /dev/evms/sdaxx instead of /dev/sdaxx. Grzegorz Kulewski