unable to partition hard disk

Hi!

I'm trying to install PVE 4.3 on a Dell PowerEdge R330 with a PERC H730 RAID controller.
I created a RAID6 virtual disk (/dev/sda) which is around 11TB in size consisting of 8 Seagate Enterprise Capacity 2TB 4Kn drives (ST2000NX0263). The virtual disk, of course, also has 4K block size.
I selected "xfs" as the filesystem type.
The installer aborts with the message "unable to partition harddisk '/dev/sda'".
The console shows the following messages:
--8<--
[...]
GPT data structures destroyed! You may now partition the disk using fdisk or
other utilities.
Creating new GPT entries.
Could not create partition 3 from 32768 to 2929459194
Could not change partition 3's type code to 8E00!
Error encountered: not saving changes.
unable to partition harddisk '/dev/sda'.
[...]
--8<--

What's wrong and how can this be fixed?

Cheers,
Wolfram
 
did you set any of the disk size parameters?
 
The installer aborts with the message "unable to partition harddisk '/dev/sda'".
Are you *really sure* your raid-array is /dev/sda?

I'm not using PERC, but on all LSI-based raid-controllers I have used the raid-array was the first free device after all drive-ports I had. So if had 4 sata/sas-ports, raid-array was /dev/sde. And I had to partition /dev/sde (raid-array), not /dev/sda (which was just one disk of that array)...

/dev/sda referred always to individual disk, i.e. when used in storcli/megacli/smartctl command...
 
Well, hdsize was prefilled with 11175.0, I did not change this.
I just set the Filesystem to xfs.

strange.. could you set the field to empty instead? that should use the full available space for that partition.. if that works, could you post the resulting partition table? if not, any further error messages would help.
 
strange.. could you set the field to empty instead? that should use the full available space for that partition.. if that works, could you post the resulting partition table? if not, any further error messages would help.

Removing the value of the hdsize field results in its value being automatically set to 0.0.
With this, the installation fails with the same error message(s) as before.

Btw., starting PVE installation in debug mode results in an open shell that does not accept any input, so it's basically unusable.
 
the installer does
Code:
sgdisk -Z DEV
sgdisk -a1 -n1:34:2047 -t1:EF02 -n2:2048:262143 -t2:EF00 -n3:128M:2929459194

the problem is that the third partition uses the "M"-suffix, while the rest uses hardcoded sector sizes.. the 128M gets converted to "32768" in your case (128*1024/4), but for the second partition the end was calculated by the installer as 128*1024*2-1 , and you end up with overlapping partitions. I'll get this fixed for the next installer release, but I fear until then (or until I get a fixed test iso built) you will need to install using the Debian Jessie installer and upgrade to PVE from that (https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_Jessie)
 
Hi!

I'm trying to install PVE 4.3 on a Dell PowerEdge R330 with a PERC H730 RAID controller.
I created a RAID6 virtual disk (/dev/sda) which is around 11TB in size consisting of 8 Seagate Enterprise Capacity 2TB 4Kn drives (ST2000NX0263). The virtual disk, of course, also has 4K block size.
I selected "xfs" as the filesystem type.
The installer aborts with the message "unable to partition harddisk '/dev/sda'".
The console shows the following messages:
--8<--
[...]
GPT data structures destroyed! You may now partition the disk using fdisk or
other utilities.
Creating new GPT entries.
Could not create partition 3 from 32768 to 2929459194
Could not change partition 3's type code to 8E00!
Error encountered: not saving changes.
unable to partition harddisk '/dev/sda'.
[...]
--8<--

What's wrong and how can this be fixed?

Cheers,
Wolfram
Hi Wolfram,
4K sector size was in the past allready an problem with lvm-storage (cache=none don't work and so on).
Can you use 512B-sectors with your raidcontroller? I guess, the performance drop is not so much, because the raidcontroller must recalculate the place for the data in both settings.

Udo
 
Hi Wolfram,
4K sector size was in the past allready an problem with lvm-storage (cache=none don't work and so on).

Do you know whether there are still existing issues with 4Kn and PVE (aside from the installer issue)?

Can you use 512B-sectors with your raidcontroller? I guess, the performance drop is not so much, because the raidcontroller must recalculate the place for the data in both settings.

It seems that the PERC H730 does not allow this kind of emulation, according to http://blog.igics.com/2016/01/dont-use-4k-native-drives-for-vmware.html :(

For example DELL PERC H730 (the best RAID controller DELL currently offers) doesn't allow you to choose sector size for virtual volume. Instead, sector size is passed from physical disks to operating system - ESXi hypervisor in our case.
 
the installer does
Code:
sgdisk -Z DEV
sgdisk -a1 -n1:34:2047 -t1:EF02 -n2:2048:262143 -t2:EF00 -n3:128M:2929459194

the problem is that the third partition uses the "M"-suffix, while the rest uses hardcoded sector sizes.. the 128M gets converted to "32768" in your case (128*1024/4), but for the second partition the end was calculated by the installer as 128*1024*2-1 , and you end up with overlapping partitions. I'll get this fixed for the next installer release, but I fear until then (or until I get a fixed test iso built) you will need to install using the Debian Jessie installer and upgrade to PVE from that (https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_Jessie)

Meh. I see. Is there a slot where I can insert some coins to get an updated installer ISO anytime soon (within a single number of days)? =)
 
Meh. I see. Is there a slot where I can insert some coins to get an updated installer ISO anytime soon (within a single number of days)? =)

not really. as always, when it's done it's done ;) but it might make sense to file a bug report for this 4k issue so that I can ping you there when a test iso is available (or if I need further information to implement a fix - I don't think we have any native 4k disks in our lab, as they are rather rare in the wild)
 
not really. as always, when it's done it's done ;) but it might make sense to file a bug report for this 4k issue so that I can ping you there when a test iso is available (or if I need further information to implement a fix - I don't think we have any native 4k disks in our lab, as they are rather rare in the wild)

I just created bug #1211: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1211
Is it ok like this? :)
 
unfortunately, I can't get such a 4KN emulated disk to boot in qemu, neither with SeaBIOS nor with UEFI, so I am not quite sure whether this will actually work as expected. @Wolfram: could you test install Debian Testing on that machine and check whether you can UEFI boot successfully using Grub?
 

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