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Re: disk partitioners vs disk with 2048 byte phusical sectors

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  Re: disk partitioners vs disk with 2048 byte phusical sectors Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> - 2017-09-27 14:50 +0200
    Re: disk partitioners vs disk with 2048 byte phusical sectors Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2017-09-27 16:50 +0200
      Re: disk partitioners vs disk with 2048 byte phusical sectors Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2017-09-27 17:00 +0200
      Re: disk partitioners vs disk with 2048 byte phusical sectors Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> - 2017-09-27 17:00 +0200
        Re: disk partitioners vs disk with 2048 byte phusical sectors Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2017-09-27 19:20 +0200
          Re: disk partitioners vs disk with 2048 byte phusical sectors David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2017-09-28 03:30 +0200
      Re: disk partitioners vs disk with 2048 byte phusical sectors Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2017-09-27 17:30 +0200
        Re: disk partitioners vs disk with 2048 byte phusical sectors Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2017-09-27 19:30 +0200

#187304 — Re: disk partitioners vs disk with 2048 byte phusical sectors

On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 08:42:08AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> 
> Do we have a disk partitioner that does understand a physical sector size 
> of any power of 2? gparted is out as this machine does not yet have an x 
> server installed, so I need a commandline tool.
> 
> Suggestions will be investigated, thank you.

You don't mention which tool(s) you've already attempted, but have you
looked at parted?

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

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#187312

On Wednesday 27 September 2017 08:46:30 Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 08:42:08AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > Do we have a disk partitioner that does understand a physical sector
> > size of any power of 2? gparted is out as this machine does not yet
> > have an x server installed, so I need a commandline tool.
> >
> > Suggestions will be investigated, thank you.
>
> You don't mention which tool(s) you've already attempted, but have you
> looked at parted?
>
parted and fdisk, parted was I think mentioned in what you snipped,  but 
fdisk doesn't know how to even check alignment. (that I know of) The 
last time I used fdisk I got write rates under 15 megs/second on a 
sata-ii interface. I backed it up and fixed it with gparted and its now 
doing about 120 megs/second.

Secondary question. On efi setups, how much blank space in front of the 
1st partition is needed for that stuff on a terrabyte drive?  Or is 
there even a rule of thumb about that?

Thanks Roberto.

> Regards,
>
> -Roberto


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#187313

On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 10:43:29AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
>Secondary question. On efi setups, how much blank space in front of the
>1st partition is needed for that stuff on a terrabyte drive?  Or is
>there even a rule of thumb about that?

You're overthinking this. The defaults should work fine. If you use the 
defaults and there's an issue, *then* there's something to talk about.

Mike Stone

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#187314

On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 10:43:29AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Wednesday 27 September 2017 08:46:30 Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 08:42:08AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > Do we have a disk partitioner that does understand a physical sector
> > > size of any power of 2? gparted is out as this machine does not yet
> > > have an x server installed, so I need a commandline tool.
> > >
> > > Suggestions will be investigated, thank you.
> >
> > You don't mention which tool(s) you've already attempted, but have you
> > looked at parted?
> >
> parted and fdisk, parted was I think mentioned in what you snipped,  but 
> fdisk doesn't know how to even check alignment. (that I know of) The 
> last time I used fdisk I got write rates under 15 megs/second on a 
> sata-ii interface. I backed it up and fixed it with gparted and its now 
> doing about 120 megs/second.
> 
You mentioned gparted, which is a graphical version of parted.  Since
gparted worked for you, I figured the non-graphical parted might do what
you need.  Personally, I have had good success specifying arbitrary
geometries with parted from the command-line.

> Secondary question. On efi setups, how much blank space in front of the 
> 1st partition is needed for that stuff on a terrabyte drive?  Or is 
> there even a rule of thumb about that?
> 
I thought only 1 MB was needed before the first partition, but I haven't
messed with efi much.

> Thanks Roberto.
> 
No problem.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

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#187326

On Wednesday 27 September 2017 10:57:24 Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 10:43:29AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Wednesday 27 September 2017 08:46:30 Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> > > On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 08:42:08AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > > Do we have a disk partitioner that does understand a physical
> > > > sector size of any power of 2? gparted is out as this machine
> > > > does not yet have an x server installed, so I need a commandline
> > > > tool.
> > > >
> > > > Suggestions will be investigated, thank you.
> > >
> > > You don't mention which tool(s) you've already attempted, but have
> > > you looked at parted?
> >
> > parted and fdisk, parted was I think mentioned in what you snipped, 
> > but fdisk doesn't know how to even check alignment. (that I know of)
> > The last time I used fdisk I got write rates under 15 megs/second on
> > a sata-ii interface. I backed it up and fixed it with gparted and
> > its now doing about 120 megs/second.
>
> You mentioned gparted, which is a graphical version of parted.  Since
> gparted worked for you, I figured the non-graphical parted might do
> what you need.  Personally, I have had good success specifying
> arbitrary geometries with parted from the command-line.
>
> > Secondary question. On efi setups, how much blank space in front of
> > the 1st partition is needed for that stuff on a terrabyte drive?  Or
> > is there even a rule of thumb about that?
>
> I thought only 1 MB was needed before the first partition, but I
> haven't messed with efi much.
>
> > Thanks Roberto.
>
> No problem.
>
> Regards,
>
> -Roberto

Here's what I found that worked after wiping the part table out:
fdisk
o
w

which made and wrote an empty dos part table.
then
sfdisk /dev/sda
, 1G
, 8G
,
write

Which made a 1G boot partition, an 8G destined to be swap, and the rest 
destined to be an ext4 partition

mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1
mkswap /dev/sda2
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3

then had apt install hdparm and busybox-static which hdparm needed.

hdparm's output
root@rock64:~# hdparm -tT /dev/sda3

/dev/sda3:
 Timing cached reads:   1106 MB in  2.00 seconds = 552.98 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 354 MB in  3.00 seconds = 117.93 MB/sec

So the alignment must be ok if it gives those speeds. OTOH, they are read 
speeds too.  Thats where I am ATM.

The clue was in the sfdisk man page, it automatically works with the 
disks native sector sizes when using the above syntax, where the comma 
says start at the earliest AVAILABLE sector in each case. 

And this is totally crazy, I had about 6 terminal-4.8 sessions going on 
workspaces 1,2,3,5 & 6, each with multiple tabs, each tab logged into 
one of my other machines, and they all just up and disappeared while I'm 
writing this.  And while it took about 10 minutes to restart the first 2 
workspaces, (the command history was gone too) everything worked except 
I had to accept a new ssh key from the rock64 I'm doing all this to. 94 
days uptime here, might be time to reboot this old beast.  Humm, 
~/bin/mailwatcher, a bashy I wrote many years ago, which automates 
feeding the fetchmail/procmail output into kmail, had also left w/o 
saying goodby. I wonder what else will turn up missing.

The pi seems much happier now that it has an insane amount of rotating 
swap, so thats next to setup on this rock64. Maybe the next person with 
a similar problem will be helped by the above list of what I did.

Thanks Roberto.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#187337

On Wed 27 Sep 2017 at 13:14:41 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:
[…]
> Here's what I found that worked after wiping the part table out:
> fdisk
> o
> w
> 
> which made and wrote an empty dos part table.
> then
> sfdisk /dev/sda
> , 1G
> , 8G
> ,
> write
> 
> Which made a 1G boot partition, an 8G destined to be swap, and the rest 
> destined to be an ext4 partition
> 
> mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1
> mkswap /dev/sda2
> mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3
> 
> then had apt install hdparm and busybox-static which hdparm needed.
> 
> hdparm's output
> root@rock64:~# hdparm -tT /dev/sda3
> 
> /dev/sda3:
>  Timing cached reads:   1106 MB in  2.00 seconds = 552.98 MB/sec
>  Timing buffered disk reads: 354 MB in  3.00 seconds = 117.93 MB/sec
> 
> So the alignment must be ok if it gives those speeds. OTOH, they are read 
> speeds too.  Thats where I am ATM.
> 
> The clue was in the sfdisk man page, it automatically works with the 
> disks native sector sizes when using the above syntax, where the comma 
> says start at the earliest AVAILABLE sector in each case. 

[…]

> The pi seems much happier now that it has an insane amount of rotating 
> swap, so thats next to setup on this rock64. Maybe the next person with 
> a similar problem will be helped by the above list of what I did.

Hopefully they will be using stretch / sfdisk≥2.26 if they use sfdisk
at all. Its man page on jessie (and earlier) looks horrific.
Glad you got it all sorted.

Cheers,
David.

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#187316

Le 27/09/2017 à 16:43, Gene Heskett a écrit :
> 
> Secondary question. On efi setups, how much blank space in front of the
> 1st partition is needed for that stuff on a terrabyte drive?

None.
That space is not used in EFI setups. Instead the bootloaders are in a 
regular EFI partition.

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#187329

On Wednesday 27 September 2017 11:28:53 Pascal Hambourg wrote:

> Le 27/09/2017 à 16:43, Gene Heskett a écrit :
> > Secondary question. On efi setups, how much blank space in front of
> > the 1st partition is needed for that stuff on a terrabyte drive?
>
> None.
> That space is not used in EFI setups. Instead the bootloaders are in a
> regular EFI partition.

I see that now on the sdcard this rock64 is booting from. 'nother memo I 
missed. :(

Thanks Pascal.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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