Re: mkfs.xfs says "can't determine device size"

[Nathan Scott <nathans@sgi.com>]

hi Alvaro,

On Thu, Feb 28, 2002 at 04:59:31PM -0600, Alvaro Figueroa wrote:
> > The device driver you're using doesn't support the BLKBSZSET ioctl.
> > It should also be returning ENOTTY (rather than EINVAL) according
> > to a recent discussion on linux-kernel for ioctl commands which it
> > doesn't recognise.
> 
> I might be talking rubish[1], but this is plain scsi disk. What specific
> device is lacking this support?
> Should I report this to the vger lkml? What should I say?

You can tell which SCSI device driver is in use by looking
in /proc/scsi/scsi (at least, that works on my system).

Then you should look up that driver in the kernel MAINTAINERS
file (linux/MAINTAINERS in XFS CVS tree) and send that person
an email asking them whether the issue is known (just forward
them my earlier mail if you like).

> > > mkfs.xfs: can't determine device size
> > 
> > I assume you're using mkfs from xfsprogs-2.0.0 -- in which case,
> > your device driver also doesn't support the BLKGETSIZE64 ioctl.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > This second one is fatal because mkfs needs to know how big your
> > device is.  You should be able to make some more progress using
> > a filesystem in a regular file
> 
> Should a raid or LVM object do it?

All block devices should support these two ioctls, but some do
not.  I think LVM still does not support BLKBSZSET for example,
but I'm not sure on that one (it was awhile ago last time I saw
that complaint on the LVM list).

> [1] I'm still a begginer at trying to know the kernel insternals, and I
> still haven't read the ioctrl section ;), so...

No problem.

cheers.

-- 
Nathan