Bug#642179: debian-installer: Installs on drives larger than 2.19TB fails with older bios

Package: debian-installer
Version: 20110106+squeeze3
Severity: normal
Tags: d-i squeeze



Debian Release: 6.0.2
APT prefers stable
APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'stable-updates')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash


Install attempts on a Tyan S7002 failed with a drive larger than 2.19TB (would fail at the grub installation)

I was able to move an install to a 1TB drive then move to a larger disk - grow the partition, but on a kernel update it would no longer boot.

This might have to do with the 2.19TB limitation of MBR - which means a move to GUID Partition Table (GPT) and possibly the need for
a BIOS's that supports GUID. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table )

In the mean time Debian installer fails to give any warning about larger drives and fdisk/sfdisk also fail to warn.


The current kernels support GPT, but it is less than clear how older bios interact. It might be that just the boot disk
needs to be smaller than 2.19TB and that storage disks formatted with GPT will work fine on machines with BIOS's that don't support GPT?
It is also possible that fdisk/cfdisk/sfdisk are failing without warning if one tries to use these large drives.

gparted supports EFI/GPT.

I'm thinking that D-i needs to detect the large drive size, possible the ability of the bios to work with this drive size and give a warning.

There might be problems supporting 2TB drives with the partioner in D-I that is independent to the BIOS. Sadly I have more questions than
answers and hope someone with a better understanding of this issue writes it up.



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