Update e2fsprogs to allow ext4 partitions larger than 16TB

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According to Wikipedia, EXT4 supports "1 EiB (limited to 16TiB because of e2fsprogs limitation)"  This limitation should be fixed so that EXT4 can be used in environments that need partitions larger than 16TB.

RP
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ES Red Hat Active Contributor 236 points
29 July 2011 3:36 PM

Just a note, XFS supports up to 100T in RHEL5 and RHEL6 today.

 

Work continues upstream on ext4 at larger filesystem sizes, but getting real scalability in ext4 will probably be an ongoing effort even after an e2fsprogs version is released which lifts the limitation.

 

The upstream list would welcome any testing feedback you may have; there is a branch in the e2fsprogs git tree which has most of the large filesystem work in it.

andriusb's picture Red Hat Guru 3695 points
29 July 2011 4:21 PM

FYI:

 

Eric is correct, refer to the following:

 

http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compare/

 

RP Active Contributor 241 points
17 August 2011 7:55 PM

We are already using XFS on two servers.  I just think it would be nice if RHEL supported filesystems larger than 16TB without having to purchase addons.  But then, I work for a research group at a University, so we are always trying to do stuff on the cheap.  :)

ES Red Hat Active Contributor 236 points
18 August 2011 4:10 PM

Speaking for myself, I agree that as each year goes by, 16T gets more and more common, so some support for ext4 > 16T will probably need to come.

 

Fedora Rawhide has an e2fsprogs snapshot release which can format > 16T.   If you're so inclined, feel free to do some testing with it, and report any bugs or problems you find to the linux-ext4 mailing list for now.  All this work will happen upstream, first.

 

Thanks!

-Eric

CL Community Member 65 points
21 September 2011 7:33 AM

We have a big backup (SATA-based) server with Bacula and is a PITA not being able to LVM+ext4 > 16 TB

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