Skip to contentSkip to conversation

q: BLOCK_SIZE

linux-lvm Michael Tokarev 4 participants 4 messages Feb 27, 2001 – Feb 28, 2001

lore
Share & tools
lore
#0 lore raw

This is a repost, basically. When I posted this question for a first time (8 Dec 2000), noone answered, but there was a way low traffic on this list that time...

Little question that I already posted here a long time ago. What drawbacks can suffer if one changes BLOCK_SIZE in include/linux/lvm.h from 1024 (or 4096 on S/390) to 512? I can't understand from code what't a real purpose of this constant, -- lvm seemed to work well with BLOCK_SIZE=512, no troubles so far, -- but i'm still not shure if it is "legal" to change that. At least there is some purpose on having different values for this constant on S/390 and other platforms, -- again, can't see that purposes...

This is about using lvm with rawio -- on 2.2, rawio wan't work with i/o size be not a multiple of blocksize, while on 2.4 it works. Or at least this was on Dec-2000.

Oh yes, this is about 2.2 kernel and lvm-0.9.

Thank you.

Regards,
Michael.

#1 lore raw
Quoted 3 lines · Michael

Little question that I already posted here a long time ago. What drawbacks can suffer if one changes BLOCK_SIZE in include/linux/lvm.h from 1024 (or 4096 on S/390) to 512?

On S/390 it would appear that the DASD block devices have a 4096 byte sector size. However, on most other systems there is only a 512 byte sector size, so I don't see any reason there would be problems with BLOCK_SIZE = 512.

I think Andrea Arcangeli was complaining about this as well.

Quoted 4 lines

This is about using lvm with rawio -- on 2.2, rawio wan't work with i/o size be not a multiple of blocksize, while on 2.4 it works. Or at least this was on Dec-2000. Oh yes, this is about 2.2 kernel and lvm-0.9.

If it works for you at 512 bytes, leave it then. Maybe Heinz will let us know why it is set to 1024 bytes.

Cheers, Andreas

Signature · 3 lines
Andreas Dilger  \ "If a man ate a pound of pasta and a pound of antipasto,
                 \  would they cancel out, leaving him still hungry?"
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/               -- Dogbert
#2 lore raw
Quoted 11 lines · Andreas Dilger
Quoted 3 lines · Michael

Little question that I already posted here a long time ago. What drawbacks can suffer if one changes BLOCK_SIZE in include/linux/lvm.h from 1024 (or 4096 on S/390) to 512?

On S/390 it would appear that the DASD block devices have a 4096 byte sector size. However, on most other systems there is only a 512 byte sector size, so I don't see any reason there would be problems with BLOCK_SIZE = 512.

I think Andrea Arcangeli was complaining about this as well.

I checked Andrea's patch into cvs, try and see.

- Joe

#3 lore raw
In reply to Andreas Dilger
Quoted 10 lines · Andreas Dilger
Quoted 3 lines · Michael

Little question that I already posted here a long time ago. What drawbacks can suffer if one changes BLOCK_SIZE in include/linux/lvm.h from 1024 (or 4096 on S/390) to 512?

On S/390 it would appear that the DASD block devices have a 4096 byte sector size. However, on most other systems there is only a 512 byte sector size, so I don't see any reason there would be problems with BLOCK_SIZE = 512.

Quoted 8 lines

I think Andrea Arcangeli was complaining about this as well.

Quoted 4 lines

This is about using lvm with rawio -- on 2.2, rawio wan't work with i/o size be not a multiple of blocksize, while on 2.4 it works. Or at least this was on Dec-2000. Oh yes, this is about 2.2 kernel and lvm-0.9.

If it works for you at 512 bytes, leave it then.

Yep.

Quoted 2 lines

Maybe Heinz
will let us know why it is set to 1024 bytes.

It is basically an approach to support larger LV sizes than 2T :)

Because the Linux kernel supports 2^32 blocks per block minor up to version 2.4, this is one approach (with tradeoffs for sure) to raise that limit.

With the 4k block size on S/390 DASD devices this means 16T per LV!

Sure: we won't have a satisfying solution before Linux 2.5.

Quoted 10 lines

Cheers, Andreas

Signature · 7 lines
Andreas Dilger  \ "If a man ate a pound of pasta and a pound of antipasto,
                 \  would they cancel out, leaving him still hungry?"
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/               -- Dogbert
_______________________________________________
linux-lvm mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.sistina.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-lvm
Signature · 15 lines
Regards,
Heinz    -- The LVM Guy --

*** Software bugs are stupid.
    Nevertheless it needs not so stupid people to solve them ***

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Heinz Mauelshagen                                 Sistina Software Inc.
Senior Consultant/Developer                       Am Sonnenhang 11
                                                  56242 Marienrachdorf
                                                  Germany
[email protected]                           +49 2626 141200
                                                       FAX 924446
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-