[SPARCbook] question about disk capacity

[Ian Spray]

On Sun, 23 Dec 2001 21:45:00 -0500
Ken Hansen <n2vip at yahoo.com> wrote:

> There is no limitation to the SCSI interface, OBP, or Solaris to the 
> best of my knowledge - the *only* limitation I am aware of is imposed by
> the IDE <-> SCSI converter used.
> 
Basically, yup - that's right.

> "Native" 2 1/2" SCSI drives topped out at 2 Gig, IIRC.
> 
There is a little OBP gotcha, and that doesn't manifest itself until you
go over 2GB (hence only an issue with an IDE<>SCSI convertor).  OBP
itself won't address any file on the drive over the 2GB boundary, so make
sure that the root partition is the first one on your drive, or you'll
have trouble finding the kernel...

This also has consequences with the Save & Resume - with 2.6 and later
there must be enough space for the .CPR file in the root directory and
this is going to be below the 2GB limit due to needing to find the
kernel, but with 2.5/2.5.1 the Save & Resume partition must also be below
2GB as the bootloader needs to grab the data from there to restore, and
this happens before the Solaris drivers are loaded.

Once Solaris has control of the drive, then there's no worry about that
sort of size issue.

So, a bit belated, but not a problem that is going to crop up often (for
anyone that's bothered, it's due to the OBP v2 that was used in the
SPARCbook range being a 32bit build.  OBP v3 removed that filesystem
limit)


HTH,

-- 
Ian Spray          :  Software Engineer     :  Tadpole-Cycle
iws at tadpole.co.uk  :  +44 (0) 1223 428 224  :  http://www.tadpole.com/