Large disk problem with LVM2...

I have a 3.09TB Hardware Raid 5 drive setup with, and I have already used about 1TB worth of space on the volume group.

Today I tried to add another 500GB logical volume and it failed with:

[root@bill ~]# lvcreate -L500G -ntest VolGroup01
device-mapper: reload ioctl failed: Invalid argument Aborting. Failed to activate new LV to wipe the start of it.

dmesg shows this:

device-mapper: table: device 8:3 too small for target
device-mapper: table: 253:7: linear: dm-linear: Device lookup failed
device-mapper: ioctl: error adding target to table

I have googled for the message and have read to run pvs like:

[root@bill ~]# pvs -o +dev_size

 PV         VG         Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree DevSize
 /dev/sda2  VolGroup00 lvm2 a-   99.97G    0  100.00G
 /dev/sda3  VolGroup01 lvm2 a-    3.09T 2.05T   1.09T

So my question is, how do I fix this? I'm running the most current (CentOS 5.2) versions of Device-Mapper and LVM and Kernel:

lvm2-2.02.32-4.el5_2.1
lvm2-cluster-2.02.32-4.el5
device-mapper-1.02.24-1.el5
device-mapper-event-1.02.24-1.el5
device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-17.el5
kernel-2.6.18-92.1.18.el5

Anyone have any ideas why pvs shows the DevSize of 1.09TB?

--Greg

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Varga
Systems Engineer & Development


Skyway West
 Phone: (604) 482-1128
 Email: [email protected]
 WebSite: www.skywaywest.com
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Another note about this...

I am able to create about a 40G logical volume but anything above 50G fails with the below error. (Which makes sense because DevSize is reporting that it only has 0.04 TB left.

Thanks,
--Greg

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Varga
Systems Engineer & Development

[ LPIC-1&2 | CCNA | MCSE | MCSA | VCP-3 ]
[ VoIP Specialist | Virtualization Specialist ]


Skyway West
 Phone: (604) 482-1128
 Email: [email protected]
 WebSite: www.skywaywest.com
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This communication contains confidential information intended only for the person to whom it is addressed.  Any unauthorized disclosure, copying, other distribution of this communication or taking any action on its contents is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify immediately and delete this message without reading, copying or forwarding it to anyone.

How was the underlying device (sda) partitioned? For a device this large, you'll need to use a GPT partition table, rather than the traditional MSDOS MBR. Some versions of tools may allow you to create large partitions on MSDOS which later cause problems, since the MSDOS format is limited to 2TiB addressing.

The output of "fdisk -l /dev/sda" and "parted /dev/sda p", as well as the content of /proc/partitions would help to confirm if this is the problem.

There have been some cosmetic bugs that caused the wrong device sizes to be reported, but this doesn't look like one of those cases - since you're getting errors from the kernel when mapping LVs onto the device, it really does appear that it's not as big as we're expecting.

Regards,
Bryn.

Thanks Bryn for getting back to me.

Here is the information you requested... I see that it is indeed a MSDos partition table... I've done a quite google search, but I can't find out how to convert it over to a GPT Partition table... Can you please help me with that or can it even be done (without erasing all the data)

Thanks,
--Greg

======================

[root@bill ~]# fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 3499.8 GB, 3499890573312 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 425504 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              14       13067   104856255   8e  Linux LVM
/dev/sda3           13068      158155  1165416554+  8e  Linux LVM

[root@bill ~]# parted /dev/sda p

Model: Promise 14+2 Disk RAID6 (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 3500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags

1      32.3kB  107MB   107MB   primary  ext3         boot
2      107MB   107GB   107GB   primary               lvm 3      107GB   1301GB  1193GB  primary               lvm 

Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.

[root@bill ~]# cat /proc/partitions major minor #blocks name

  8     0 3417861888 sda
  8     1     104391 sda1
  8     2  104856255 sda2
  8     3 1165416554 sda3
253     0   40960000 dm-0
253     1   59768832 dm-1
253     2    4096000 dm-2
253     3  167772160 dm-3
253     4  314572800 dm-4
253     5  524288000 dm-5
253     6  104857600 dm-6

--Greg

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Varga
Systems Engineer & Development

Skyway West
 Phone: (604) 482-1128
 Email: [email protected]
 WebSite: www.skywaywest.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This communication contains confidential information intended only for the person to whom it is addressed.  Any unauthorized disclosure, copying, other distribution of this communication or taking any action on its contents is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify immediately and delete this message without reading, copying or forwarding it to anyone.