Reaching Beyond Two-Terabyte Filesystems

Jeremy Andrews writes: "Peter Chubb posted a patch to the lkml, with which he's now managed to mount a 15 terabyte file (using JFS and the loopback device). Without the patch, Peter explains, "Linux is limited to 2TB filesystems even on 64-bit systems, because there are various places where the block offset on disc are assigned to unsigned or int 32-bit variables." Peter works on the Gelato project in Australia. His efforts include cleaning up Linux's large filesystem support, removing 32-bit filesystem limitations. When I asked him about the new 64-bit filesystem limits, he offered a comprehensive answer and this interesting link. The full thread can be found here on KernelTrap. Reaching beyond terabytes, beyond pentabytes, on into exabytes. I feel this sudden discontent with my meager 60 gigabyte hard drive..."

Comments

Pentabytes?

[mbrubeck]

Petabytes, please!

pentabytes?

[circletimessquare]

what is that, 5 bytes? ;-P

Wow!

[gazbo]

Any other patches been submitted to the kernel? Perhaps an off-by-one error has been found; maybe an unchecked buffer has been fixed?

Keep it up guys - until they create some sort of 'Linux kernel mailing list' the Slashdot front page is my only source for this information.

xfs for linux

[mysticbob]

xfs for linux has provided significantly larger than 2Tb filesystems for a while. the official size supported is:

26^3 = 9 x 10^18 = 9 exabytes

check out the feature list.

fsck times

[danny]

Because fsck would take so long, it's unlikely that a non-journalled filesystem would be used on a large partition/logical volume.

You can say that again! Fscking even 60 gig takes a painfully long time - with 10 terabytes it wouldn't be "go away and take a long coffee break", it would be more like "go away and read a book". And the with the 9EB limit he mentions, maybe "go away and write a book"!

Danny.