Setting up a Linux system with a 3.5TB disk

As mentioned in my last post, I have this remote linux system with 3.5TB of disk, but broken into two LVMs. I want most of the storage to be in one big disk.


Today I had my remote monkey put the RHEL4 WS DVD in the machine and rebooted it. I entered the RAID BIOS (Dell PERC 5/i) to delete the existing virtual disks. I then created two new virtual disks -- one of 250GB for the OS, and one of the remaining 3.4TB for the data.

I booted from the RHEL DVD and entered "rescue" mode, because anaconda does not support making GPT disks. Then I entered

parted /dev/sdb
mklabel gpt
mkpart primary 0 3571900M
quit

Then:

mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1

Making the EXT3 FS took about 22 minutes.

That's mostly it! I rebooted and ran anaconda this time, setting up LVM on /dev/sda (except /boot, of course). I left /dev/sdb alone.

Want to convert partition table from MBR to GPT

One of the Linux (RHEL4) systems at work has about 3.5 TB of disk in a RAID configuration. Unfortunately, the guy who setup the system (not me) had apparently never heard of GPT before. So, he partitioned the RAID into two portions -- one of 2 TB, and the other 1.5 TB. Each of those partitions is managed by LVM.

Despite hours of searching, I am unable to figure out a way to convert these to one big 3.5 TB partition. The operating system is mostly installed on LVM-managed parts of the disk, so I can't destroy the partitions and redo them without reinstalling the OS.

The best part is that the system is 2,000 miles away. Fortunately, we recently installed a digital KVM switch to the system. We also have someone there that can manage to insert the installation CD. With the KVM I can reconfigure the RAID and reinstall the OS remotely.

By the way, if you are thinking of getting an Avocent KVM switch, and you want to use LDAP authentication -- well, you better have Active Directory, because Avocent's crappy software does not allow you to configure the LDAP authentication query. In addition, their tech support seems to be both clueless and illiterate.