Hello everyone,
I just finished refreshing one of my machines with a clean install of Ubuntu Server 8.10 (x86-64), to act as a Samba file server.
Everything goes well during installation, like a breeze , and the server boots fine once set up.
I've got a question regarding the partitionning of the data disks I use.
These are Hitachi 7K1000 1TB SATA drives. There are 4 of them, each containing a single primary partition of 1TB.
These are used solely as data drives under /mediadisks, the /, swap and /home are on another disk.
If I partition these drives on Mac OS X Leopard using Disk Utility, and format them as HFS+, the formated capacity comes about roughly 931GB, which is the normal formatted capacity for such drives.
If I use the partitionner that runs when installing Ubuntu Server, (i believe it's called partman, not sure about that), choosing 'Manual' and selecting the following options :
- Create a single 1TB primary partition
- format it as a ext3 FS
- Mounting it under /mediadisk with these options : noexec, nosuid, noatime
- with 0% reserved blocks for the super-user (this disk will only be used for data)
- Setting the usage parameter to 'standard'
Then when the system is installed, issuing a df -h shows me :
Code:
/dev/sdb1 917G 200M 917G 1% /mediadisk
Or, using df -H (mind the case) :
Code:
/dev/sdb1 985G 200M 985G 1% /mediadisk
Thus my 1TB disk has lost some 25GB somewhere when being formatted ?!
But wait, there is more !
If I re-run the installation, and choose the following options when partitionning the drive (what has changed is in bold):
- Create a single 1TB primary partition
- format it as a ext3 FS
- Mounting it under /mediadisk with these options : noexec, nosuid, noatime
- with 0% reserved blocks for the super-user (this disk will only be used for data)
- Setting the usage parameter to 'largefile'
In this case, once the system installed, a df -h says :
Code:
/dev/sdb1 932G 200M 932G 1% /mediadisk
Or, with df -H :
Code:
/dev/sdb1 1.0T 200M 1.0T 1% /mediadisk
Thus this largefile option during formatting allows me to use the full capacity of my disk, namely 932GB.
I get the same capacity as if it was formatted using another system (e.g. Mac OS X Leopard as HFS+, or even Windows XP as NTFS)
The same problem exists when I want to partition and format the backup disk (Same 1TB drive, this time in a external USB2.0 enclosure),
using the classic procedure fdisk / mkfs -t ext3 -m 0 / mount, the now mounted backup disk says it only has 917GB available.
Is there a way to tell fdisk (or mkfs) to switch in 'largefile' mode, as the partitioner used during install, and the reclaim those lost 25GB ?
Any help appreciated !
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