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Has anyone had experience with setting up Linux RedHat EL Server 5.2 on a hardware platform were the boot partition is larger than 2Tb?

Every time I have tried this I get the message that RedHat does not support the boot partition on a GPT volume. Is there a work around for this as I have read that you can use parted but I am not sure how to invoke this on install?

Thanks in advance.

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To answer your question on how to invoke it on install, you don't.

Instead you use parted from a live CD, (I used SystemRescueCD) to create the partitions first, then boot into the CentOS CD,s.

When it comes to partitioning, choose to use existing partitions.

Whilst it may be possible to do this, why not just put the OS on a 3GB partition on it's own and the rest of disk in it's own partition?

Alternatively just put /boot on it's own 100MB partition if you have a desire to put the rest in one partition.

My eventual set up looked like this

[root@centos ~]# parted /dev/sda
GNU Parted 1.8.1
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print                                                            

Model: LSI MegaRAID 84016E (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 10.5TB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name  Flags
 1      17.4kB  3000MB  3000MB  ext3               boot 
 2      3000MB  13.0GB  10.0GB  linux-swap              
 3      13.0GB  20.0GB  7000MB  ext3                    
 4      20.0GB  10.5TB  10.5TB  ext3                    

(parted) quit                                                             
Information: Dont forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.             

[root@centos ~]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1             2.8G  1.4G  1.2G  55% /
tmpfs                 4.0G     0  4.0G   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda4             9.4T  3.4T  6.1T  36% /home
/dev/sda3             6.4G  1.3G  4.8G  22% /var
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Thanks for this, do you have any notes on how to use parted or did you use the GUI version on the rescue CD? – aHunter Apr 27 '10 at 14:18
There isn't really enough room in these comments to go through it step by step but if you type parted /dev/sda to at the command line to get into parted and then help to see the commands and descriptions. Basically you will need mklabel and mkpart. I then used mkfs from the command line to format the partitions. See sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-Partitioning-EN-The-new-GPT-disk-layout for more details on gpt and parted on systemrescueCD. If you still need more help post a new question and I will keep an eye out for it. I hope I have answered your question. – Richard Holloway Apr 27 '10 at 17:10
Or use gparted which is a graphical parted – Richard Holloway Apr 27 '10 at 17:10
aHunter, did you ever get your server installed? – Richard Holloway Aug 13 '10 at 23:34
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It is recommended to use a device of no greater than 2TB in size for the boot disk.

Alternatively, most hardware RAID controllers allow splitting their storage as multiple disks presented to the operating system; this can be used to create disks smaller than 2 TB. Refer to the RAID controller vendor's documentation or support service for details. If devices larger than 2TB in size must be created the logical volume manager (LVM) may be used to assemble smaller physical devices into a larger logical volume.

http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-4282

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