Subject: llseek error & large partitions

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 10:53:07 +0000

I am encountering an error formatting large partitions (2.8 gb). 
Equipment is a pentium 100, Adaptec 1542CF, DEC DSP5300.

The drive partitions just fine, then when the debian install program 
tries to read past around 2.1 gb I receive a message "badblocks: Cant 
resolve symbol llseek".

Also, I receive this message when past this point and writing the 
inode tables, "256/350 mkfs.ext2: Can't resolve symbol llseek"

Does anyone have any idea what is going on here? 

Thanks for any help,

Mike Bigus
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 96 10:27 EDT

Johnny>  I do not know why this happens, only that the same thing happend
  Johnny> to me when I tried to format my Quantum Sirrocco 2.5 Gig hard
  Johnny> drive.  Around about the 2.1 gig it starts reporting errors.  I can
  Johnny> only assume that the system cannot handle partitions over 2 gig.

You need a version of fdisk that as recent as 2.0 or better to support disks
bigger than 2 GB, for example the fdisk from util-linux-2.5 which says

	miles:~ [root] # fdisk -v
	fdisk v2.1 (>4GB)     

As for maximal partition size, read (using altavista or dejanews) the
newsgroup article with referenced below, it shows how partitions can be as
large as 959 GB (yes, just under one TB, a million MB). You have to increase
the block size which becomes a little inefficient at that size ... 

I cannot recommend few big partitions anyway. Disks do fail, and you're
better off when it happens on a limited partition, /usr/local say, rather
than on /. 

Subject:      Re: Really 2 GB file size limit?
From:         [email-masked] (Kristian Köhntopp)
Date:         1996/07/28
Message-Id:   <[email-masked]>
References:   <[email-masked]> <[email-masked]> <[email-masked]>
Organization: entfällt
Newsgroups:   comp.os.linux.development.system        

--
Dirk Eddelb"uttel                             http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/~edd

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From: Johnny Stevenson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 13:19:53 +0100

> Does anyone have any idea what is going on here?

I do not know why this happens, only that the same thing happend to me
when I tried to format my Quantum Sirrocco 2.5 Gig hard drive.  Around
about the 2.1 gig it starts reporting errors.  I can only assume that
the system cannot handle partitions over 2 gig.

This is not that big a problem as you can use quite a few partitions on
you hard drive.  If you read the debian.FAQ document, it has some guide
lines on what sizes you should make your partitions and what they should
be mounted as.

-- 

Be seeing you...

xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx
 Johnny Stevenson
 2nd Year Bsc Computing Science

 E-mail : [email-masked]
 URL    : http://www.ncl.ac.uk/~n4215605
xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx

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From: Austin Donnelly <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 96 22:49 BST

>Does anyone have any idea what is going on here? 

The install discs have a slimmed-down version of C library on them to
allow the rest of the installation system to fit. In the process of
slimming libc, bits have been missed out: it seems like llseek() is
one of the functions that have been purged.

Please could you file a bug against the installation discs virtual package?
(I would do it myself, only I can't remember the exact name).

Austin