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sxanness
Asked: 2010-04-02 06:22:37 +0800 CST

Getting around the lack of GPT support with CentOS 5.4

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Last night I upgraded a server (Dell 2970) to have four 1TB Hard Drives in RAID 5 which leaves a 3TB block. I tried to partition this but keep getting an error that GPT is not supported so.

I found a site online telling me I need to run the dd command and right random data to /dev/sda. This is great (if it works) but taking forever. I have two more machines to upgrade today and not a chair in sight! Does anyone have advice on how I can avoid this issue beforehand?

Thank You for your advice and support.

centos gpt

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Do you really need such a large partition? I would split it up into smaller chunks using LVM on top of the RAID array, to avoid using unsupported workarounds.

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  2. You can install CentOS onto GPT disk layouts using a combination of SystemRescueCD, CentOS 5.0 and a patched version of grub.

    Although it does involve unsupported work-arounds this is only for the installation itself. The result is a standard CentOS server.

    It is quite a lengthy process but can be achieved and I have written up this how to Install CentOS onto large partitions using gpt disk layout on my blog.

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