Partitioning an AF (4K) Drive and Ubuntu Server 10.04

[AtlantaBob]

Hi guys. I had an earlier post (in General Hardware) about choosing an HD for a Linux Server. The good news is that a 1TB AF HD works in a Dell SC 420; the bad news is that I have to partition it...

I know there are issues with the sector alignment. I tried using the guided partition tool during the installation -- I wanted 10 GB of the disk to be dedicated to the system with the remainder being a data partition (and, if necessary, /swap, /boot, etc.) Ubuntu is going to be the only operating system on this machine. However, I'm just not smart enough to get it to work (or to know that it's working):

The results of sudo -fdisk -lu /dev/sda are (somewhat abbreviated):

start end system
/dev/sda1 2048 499711 Linux
Partition 1 does not end on a cylinder boundary
/dev/sda2 501758 1953523711 Extended
/dev/sda5 501760 1953523711 Linux LVM

I really don't know where to go from here. I just know that a.) I want the partitioning to work without the weird overhead issues associated with some 4K partitions, and b.) I just want one data partition on the rest of the disk (unless I need a swap partition, etc.)

Any suggestions? Thanks,

 

[JD50]

assuming sda1 is /boot, you just need to use LVM to finish the job. You can resize logical volumes when they're online, so don't worry too much about that.

 

[AtlantaBob]

JD50 --

THANK YOU! I've just spend the last two hours or so reading up on LVM's and relearning all of my partitioning information -- and I just got it set up before I read your post. I was a little confused at first by the whole idea of the LVM (rather than the simple old days partitioning schemes).

Edit: for what it's worth Ubuntu Server 10.04 appears to partition correctly with the AF drives (e.g. beginning on an even numbered sector => 64)

For anyone else who has this question, these articles helped a lot:

Introduction to LVM and a howto:

http://linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/04/27/managing-disk-space-with-lvm.html

Also useful http://www.linuxconfig.org/Linux_lvm_-_Logical_Volume_Manager
More common tasks with LVM http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/commontask.html
Moving /Home after you're done http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-partplan.html

 

[lxskllr]

I didn't have the answer, but thanks for posting the solution. It's irritating when you Google something, find a very relevant forum post, and the OP says he figured it out, but doesn't provide the solution :bangs head:

 

[LCTSI]

I didn't have the answer, but thanks for posting the solution. It's irritating when you Google something, find a very relevant forum post, and the OP says he figured it out, but doesn't provide the solution :bangs head:

I had a situation like that, found a relevant post on H|F and managed to get a PM back from the guy with the problem. Sometimes it helps to register and PM