Creating a filesystem with mkfs.xfs or mkfs.ext4 on a 3PAR thin provisioned LUN fails on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3

Issue

• When running mkfs.xfs or mkfs.ext4 on a 3PAR thin provisioned LUN it fails with messages similar to the following:

  • XFS:

  # mkfs.xfs /dev/mapper/mpathX
  meta-data=/dev/mapper/mpathX     isize=512    agcount=16, agsize=819196 blks
           =                       sectsz=512   attr=2, projid32bit=1
           =                       crc=1        finobt=0, sparse=0
  data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=13107136, imaxpct=25
           =                       sunit=4      swidth=4096 blks
  naming   =version 2              bsize=4096   ascii-ci=0 ftype=1
  log      =internal log           bsize=4096   blocks=6400, version=2
           =                       sectsz=512   sunit=4 blks, lazy-count=1
  realtime =none                   extsz=4096   blocks=0, rtextents=0
  existing superblock read failed: Input/output error
  mkfs.xfs: pwrite64 failed: Input/output error
  

  • EXT4:

  # mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/mpathX
  mke2fs 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)
  Warning: could not erase sector 2: Attempt to write block to filesystem resulted in short write
  Filesystem label=
  OS type: Linux
  Block size=4096 (log=2)
  Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
  Stride=4 blocks, Stripe width=4096 blocks
  3276800 inodes, 13107200 blocks
  655360 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
  First data block=0
  Maximum filesystem blocks=2162163712
  400 block groups
  32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
  8192 inodes per group
  Superblock backups stored on blocks:
          32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
          4096000, 7962624, 11239424
  
  Allocating group tables: done
  Warning: could not read block 0: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read
  Warning: could not erase sector 0: Attempt to write block to filesystem resulted in short write
  Writing inode tables: done
  Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
  Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information:   0/400
  Warning, had trouble writing out superblocks.
  

• Installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 (or newer) fails because it cannot format filesystems.

• When running mkfs.xfs on a 3PAR LUN, it gets stuck and the formatting process doesn't finish.