2GB memory limit running fsck on a +6TB device

Andreas Dilger adilger at sun.com
Wed Jun 11 14:59:08 UTC 2008


On Jun 11, 2008  13:51 +0200, santi at usansolo.net wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:14:45 +0200, <santi at usansolo.net> wrote:
> 
> >> Because /var/cache/e2fsck is on the same disk spindle as the
> >> filesystem you are checking, you're probably getting killed on seeks.
> >> Moving /var/cache/e2fsck to another disk partition will help (or
> >> better yet, battery backed memory device), but the best thing you can
> >> do is get a 64-bit kernel and not need to use the auxiliary storage in
> >> the first place.
> > 
> > I'm trying a fast test with "mount tmpfs /var/cache/e2fsck -t tmpfs -o
> > size=2048M", but appears that will take a long time to complete too.. so
> > the next test will be with a 64-bit LiveCD :)
> 
> Note that putting '/var/cache/e2fsck' in a memory filesystem is aprox. 3
> times faster ;-)

...but, isn't the problem that you don't have enough RAM?  Using tdb+ramfs
isn't going to be faster than using the RAM directly.

I suspect that the only way you are going to check this filesystem efficiently
is to boot a 64-bit kernel (even just from a rescue disk), set up some swap
just in case, and run e2fsck from there.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Sr. Staff Engineer, Lustre Group
Sun Microsystems of Canada, Inc.




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