I'm guessing: Because that's one nearly all PCs use, and everyone wanting to try Linux and using Windows would be unwilling to reformat their hard disks.

Exactly! Yes, it is frustrating, but that's the way it is. The dos/Windows partition table is showing its age, unfortunately.

Really, it's a least as bad in Windows; see if for example:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=814070

Well there goes 1 months work. 3ware tells me it cant be done if I did not set a size in their controller for boot volumne. So I had to break the array and start from scratch. Im just not sure about the auto-carving feature now. Do I turn it on or not? If so do I turn it on before the raid and boot creation or not. Im on hold with them now.

I can honestly say that life is too short to use linux. All in all this is almost 2 months from start to finish and Im not done yet. Next time I try to save a customer money by not buying 2 50 cals of server 200x enterprise just shoot me.

Thanks again for the help.

Auto-carving's up to you
- with proper GPT formatting and no auto-carving, you'll be able to use _any_ size of volume on the disk.
- with auto-carving and DOS MBT you'll get all your disk space, but you're stuck with a 2TB max volume size, unless you add a layer of software RAID0 to concat the volumes.

As has been mentioned above, the problems you've had aren't particular to Linux - the default Windows install will do exactly the same thing. If you've got the skills to correct the problem on Windows, then you're a step ahead, but the facilities are the same on both OSes as far as disk partitioning is concerned.

Solaris on the other hand...

Dave

The answer is quite simple. Try creating 1 primary and 3 logical partitions and you should not have any problem creating, formatting and mounting them. The primary partition must be active.

Make sure each partition is less than 2000 GB.

So when suse asks me how I want my 3 partitions it shows...

2gb swp
20gb boot
1.9tb data

Since I told the 3ware card to use 100gb as a boot volume what do I do now. Do I stay within the 100gb limits for the 3 partitions or do I take the default and create my over 2tb free space partiton when Im done?

Also suse loaded grub instead of lilo and when it rebooted it wont boot grub crashes. Is there a way to load lilo now that its finished or do I have to start again?

Server 2003 this is a click of a button.
http://kb.ciprico.com/lore/article.php?id=315

OK, from what I can tell from the 3ware knowledge base, specifying a boot volume presents a small LUN to boot from, which can have a DOS disk label. If there's any justice in the world, that volume will appear as disk /dev/sda . Put / and /boot on that volume when the installer asks (haven't played with SuSE, so I don't know how it describes those partitions during the install). Once you're installed, you can make a GPT label for the remainder of the storage space with parted (which will be 2.something TB) and partition it however you please.

By the way, the Server 2003 one-click procedure is just to create a GPT label - you'd still lose all your data on that disk. That operation on Linux would be:
# parted /dev/sdb
> mklabel gpt
and then you'd be in the same position.

Dave

grub should see two disks - disk 0 should be the boot-volume from the 3ware card, and the rest of the array should show up as disk 1 (I'm assuming there's no other disks on the system). As long as you've installed the OS on the boot-volume, grub shouldn't have any issues.

Dave

Thanks for sticking with me. Sorry to be such a PITA.

Ok

Im going to post the exact proposal it gives me and then try to figure out the rest. Give me a few minutes to re install suse.

Suse wants to do this---->
create swap /dev/sda1 2gb
create root /dev/sda2 97.9gb ext3

I deleted the data partition as I can do that later correct?

Is that good?

Perfect. That should create a bootable SuSE on the boot-volume and leave the other LUN (>2TB) alone.

(If you go into the 'expert' tab, you should see /dev/sda entries totaling 100GB, and /dev/sdb entries totaling the rest of the size of the RAID array).

Dave

When I click the expert tab thats all it shows (above info). Should I just install or create the others now?

Just install - you can format and carve up the big LUN later. The fact that the installer has suggested swap and root sizes with total ~100GB tells me that the boot-volume LUN is working OK.

Dave

Rodger that!

I'll put $12.00 into paypal for your favorite beer.

Thanks.....

Want to ease up a bit and check out my photography?

michaelkdickson.com

Oooh, cool. The misty Huntington Beach shot's particularly awesome. 'Your lunch meat or your life!'s giving me the Fear.

Thanks again for your help. When I clicked the accept button it proposed a final version that showed the balance of the 2.7tb in 2 slices a 1.9 and a 675gb. So I guess it worked. The customer was closing so I will see in the AM what happened.

OK

I came in this AM and all looks good with the partitions. This will sound stupid but how do I make those extra partitions into drives for sharing and backup? I guess Im learning whcih is what I set out to do. We all have to start at square one.

Heres what I see in yast partitioner...

/dev/sda 99.9gb
/dev/sda1 2gb swp
/dev/sda2 97.9gb native
/dev/sdb 1.9tb
/dev/sdc 645.9gb

parted print shows....
using /dev/sda
disk /dev/sda:107gb
1 start 32.3kb end 2155mb size 2155mb type primary
2 start 2155mb end 107gb size 107gb type primary ext3

error unable to open /dev/sdb -unrecognized disk label

same error for sdc

ON EDIT.......

I figured out hot to mklabel gpt and mkpart so Im good now. How do I make those two new partitions show up as drives?