On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Jan Damborsky <Jan.Damborsky at sun.com> wrote: > Hi Shidokht, > > > Shidokht Yadegari wrote: >> >> On 05/27/09 10:36, Jan Damborsky wrote: >>> >>> Hi Pallavi, >>> >>> could you please add release notes for bugs 9026 >>> and 6843138 to OpenSolaris 2009.06 release notes ? >>> >>> Shidokht, could you please take a look to verify if >>> the information captured below is correct and provide >>> workaround for 6843138 if one exists ? >>> >> ... >>> >>> >>> ================================================================================== >>> bugid: 6843138 >>> synopsis: can not boot off a 2.2TB and zfs root >>> >>> Platforms affected: >>> x86 >>> >>> Description: >>> Due to the limitation in current implementation of GRUB which OpenSolaris >>> uses as boot >>> loader on x86 platform, OpenSolaris operating system can't be booted from >>> disk which >>> capacity exceeds 2^32 sectors or 2TB (assuming that sector size is 512 >>> bytes). >> >> Hi, >> >> Since the problem depends on whether the needed data for booting falls in >> the region >> defined by the lower 32bits of capacity, ?I'd suggest rewording "can't be >> booted" >> to "may not be booted" > > ok. > >> >> >> I don't have a great workaround here. For a warm reboot, if we do a >> modunload -i 0 >> and then do reboot, fastreboot would have a chance in rebooting the system >> bypassing >> grub if all loaded drivers support quiesce. > > If my understanding of the problem is correct, if we make sure that slice > which root pool resides in doesn't exceed 2TB boundary, GRUB will be > always able to locate all necessary pieces even on >2TB disk ? > > Thinking about this more, I am a little bit confused. I was assuming > that it is not possible to utilize space after 2TB, as fdisk > partition table also uses 32 bits for defining sector partition geometry, > so it would be always assured that all necessary data are stored > within first 2TB ? > > Thank you, > Jan
Jan, as far as I can tell, you are correct with this. Current workaround: Only access first 2TB of physical hdd due to 32bit VTOC. Or, alternativel, use disk not as boot-device and EFI-label it (which was't the question). Two long-term solutions: A) Grub 2 and EFI label B) Taking relevant bits out of Grub 2 and backporting them to 0.97 as currently shipping. Both are technically doable. And some guys are working on this and have it already working. Please ask Jan Setje-Eilers. Martin
