"Attempt to access beyond end of device" problem

[Yamin, Yossi]

HI,
Thanks for the quick response.
I think the situation is different then what you describe since we have
abut  10 FS with the same size 2142.1 GB that have no problem.
Thanks,
Yossi

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Sandeen [mailto:sandeen at redhat.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 4:56 PM
To: Yamin, Yossi
Cc: ext3-users at redhat.com
Subject: Re: "Attempt to access beyond end of device" problem

Yamin, Yossi wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> We are using Ext3 on with RedHat 4 U3 File Sysetm.
> 
> We got the following errors at the /var/log/messages file
> 
>  
> 
> Jun 23 09:28:29 diligent1 kernel: attempt to access beyond end of
device
> 
> Jun 23 09:28:29 diligent1 kernel: sddlmbj1: rw=1, want=6332971392,
> limit=4183807887

...

> What do you think was the root cause for this issue ?

> Please notice that this specific FS is more than 2TB size but
configured
> with msdos partition label.

Hm, I think you just stated the root cause.  Did the filesystem work
fine until you rebooted it?  Did it used to be 8T?  And did you use
parted to create it?

Parted wrongly allows you to make a >2T msdos partition table and pokes
it directly into the kernel, but the on-disk format cannot hold the
large value.  So when you reboot, it's read as something smaller.

You might be able to do a trick where you create a new GPT label in
place of the old DOS label, with the same start point as the dos label,
but with a correct endpoint.

I would not repair the fs; if my guess is right, 3/4 of it is now
unreachable and fsck will probably do heavy damage.

-Eric