I followed the partitioning instructions in the handbook to create some very large partitions on our servers. However, I was not aware of the shortcomings of fdisk with respect to very large partitions >2TB. I would have been saved a lot of hassle if any handbook had offered a link to: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/RAID/Software#Large_Partitions I think large drives and RAID arrays are common enough now to warrant this, so please consider adding a note to save poor saps like me from a nightmare scenario of recreating the partition on a production server :-( Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Follow handbook to use fdisk to create a partition > 2 TB on a disk or RAID array (this was the default sized boot partition) 2. Follow the handbook to format the partition Actual Results: df -ah shows partition size maxed out at 2 TB Expected Results: The result is what is expected if you know that fdisk can't cope with large partitions. A note to the link above would have alerted me to the issue so that I could have avoided it. ...as above, I think that very large drives are common-place now, so this is worth mentioning.
gpt-fdisk is a patch for fdisk to modernize fdisk for larger drives. Please add the patech to the fdisk for gentoo or make gpt-fdisk an option, even on the minimal installation cd. Some GPT solution is needed in the installation docs as well on the installation media, if not gpt-fdisk. [1] http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/
this isnt the place for requesting ebuild updates. not that i'd add the patch to util-linux in the first place ... it really should go through upstream.
For x86/amd64, the livecds support the use of "parted". I've included a section on parted in CVS now. This should show up on the site in an hour or so. Thanks for reporting!
