Topic: Replacing Fdisk with Gdisk to allow booting from GPT Disks

[AusMounty]

Hello all,

I have been using SME Server ever since it was E-Smith community edition (V4 I think) but recently I have come into an issue.

I have recently built a server which has the Intel H61 chipset (more commonly used in Blade server technology) and trying to format a single 2Tb drive it plainly screams the cannot be formatted for use with SME. Yet another distro Zentyal (Not optimal imho) which uses Gdisk does allow the OS to boot.

What I would like to know is there a build out there (SME) that does use this method? My client is getting rather impatient because I have tried Zentyal and it keeps screwing up! Not good!

Any help is appreciated.

Regards,
Dave
(aka AusMounty)

[cactus]

Strange AFAIK 2Tb drives should be handles by any OS, but it is the limit. Are you sure it is not larger? What does the error say exactly?

AFAIK CentOS and hence SME Server does not support disks larger than 2Gb based on the information in this thread, which says:

GPT is required for disks/arrays that are bigger than 2TB. The old DOS partition table format is limited to <2TB disks/arrays.
Booting from a disk with a GPT label requires EFI BIOS and an EFI-compatible boot loader. The version of GRUB in CentOS 5 doesn't support GPT or EFI.

[Stefano]

Strange AFAIK 2Tb drives should be handles by any OS, but it is the limit. Are you sure it is not larger? What does the error say exactly?

AFAIK CentOS and hence SME Server does not support disks larger than 2Gb based on the information in this thread, which says:

I'm using 4x1.5 Tb with no spare raid5 arrays with no issues at all..

[AusMounty]

The motherboard is an Asus with Intel H61 EFI chipset with drive controller set to AHCI, comes up saying that use to the drive is running under the GPT file system, the drive will not be bootable.

The harddisk in question is a 2Tb, I would really prefer to run SME on this system for it simplicity but has me jiggered to get the blasted thing to install short of running a smaller drive as a base for the OS.

[Stefano]

Try SME8.b6.. it should work out of the box

[AusMounty]

I did, had the same error. I have been thinking that it might just be that the bios might need flashing on the motherboard. I have remembered that I have had to do that in the past with some other boards to make it work... just have to see if there is a new bios for that board.

[cactus]

I did, had the same error. I have been thinking that it might just be that the bios might need flashing on the motherboard. I have remembered that I have had to do that in the past with some other boards to make it work... just have to see if there is a new bios for that board.

CentOS and hence SME Server does not support GPT, which is required for your disk. Please check the link I posted earlier. I remember some suggestions for workarounds being posted there.

[AusMounty]

Well I got it working!   

Bit of an odd way around it though, here is how I did it:

1. Connected the GPT disk to my own machine and rebooted into Windows 7 64bit.

2. Opened a command window and typed "diskpart" (without quotes obviously) and followed the instructions on which I found to convert the GPT format into MBR.

3. Shutdown my tower and removed the HDD I had just converted, then connecting back into the machine which was to become the new server.

4. Booted the machine with SME Server 8b6 and lo & behold it recognized the drive had been a GPT but with MBR instead.
The OS asked if I wanted it to format and install to GPT & I selected yes. Formatted & installed...

Crossed my fingers that it would boot next time round and voila! It booted to the
wonderful boot menu we all love to see.

Windows can be useful sometimes.

Regards,
Dave

[gippsweb]

This probably would not have happened if the disk was first used with SME.

It sounds like the problem occurred because the disc was first formatted with a O/S to be GPT. That is why running diskpart to restore it to MBR in win7 worked and solved your problem..