dbspace sizes

I am configuring a 7.3 IDS engine on a SUN box. I configured a 4 GB volume on 1 disk. I created a dbspace on the volume with the first chunk at offset 0 and a size of 2 GB (approximately). I try to add a second chunk, with an offset of 2GB and a size of 2GB but Informix won't let me. I get the following error: Chunk size + offset (4194000) greater than 2097151 limit. Anyone have any ideas? I should mention that I called Informix and they told me that I couldn't have an offset of larger than 2GB on any 1 volume. Their solution: Break up the 4GB volume into 2 2GB volumes. This is a terrible solution. I can't believe I have to do this. This would unmanagable if I had a really large database. Thanks in advance. Doug bolon@royhouff.com

Informix Tech Support are correct. The sum of your offset and chunk size must not exceed 2GBytes. So, use "format" to slice your disk up into 2x2GByte slices. Incidentally, you should ensure that the first cylinder of your disk is unused, either by excluding cylinder 0 by format, or by specifying a small offset. Solaris stores the disk vtoc at the begining of the disk, and is stupid enough to allow it to be overwritten when used for a raw device. Neil Truby Londis Stores Hampton Hill, UK Doug wrote in message <7mgb70$s1e$1@ffx2nh3.news.uu.net>... >I am configuring a 7.3 IDS engine on a SUN box. I configured a 4 GB volume >on 1 disk. I created a dbspace on the volume with the first chunk at offset >0 and a size of 2 GB (approximately). I try to add a second chunk, with an >offset of 2GB and a size of 2GB but Informix won't let me. I get the >following error: > > Chunk size + offset (4194000) greater than 2097151 limit. > >Anyone have any ideas? I should mention that I called Informix and they >told me that I couldn't have an offset of larger than 2GB on any 1 volume. >Their solution: Break up the 4GB volume into 2 2GB volumes. This is a >terrible solution. I can't believe I have to do this. This would >unmanagable if I had a really large database. > >Thanks in advance. >Doug >bolon@royhouff.com > > > >

Doug wrote: > > I am configuring a 7.3 IDS engine on a SUN box. I configured a 4 GB volume > on 1 disk. I created a dbspace on the volume with the first chunk at offset > 0 and a size of 2 GB (approximately). I try to add a second chunk, with an > offset of 2GB and a size of 2GB but Informix won't let me. I get the > following error: > > Chunk size + offset (4194000) greater than 2097151 limit. > > Anyone have any ideas? I should mention that I called Informix and they > told me that I couldn't have an offset of larger than 2GB on any 1 volume. > Their solution: Break up the 4GB volume into 2 2GB volumes. This is a > terrible solution. I can't believe I have to do this. This would > unmanagable if I had a really large database. Bad news Doug, tech support is correct. Informix cannot use any offset or offset plus size that adds up to more than 2097150K (page size is 2K so you cannot even use that last 1K). You have to partition your drives or arrays into 2GB partitions or logical drives. The only time this is a problem is on a Sun Solaris system without a volume manager and a drive larger than 14GB since Solaris only permits seven partitions per drive. If this is you, get a volume manager like Veritas or the Sun VM, which is a repackaged Veritas though usually a few versions behind. Then you can easily create as many logical drives as you want. Actually this is better than creating a large partition and using offsets. If your disk crashes and you need to recreate the environment and restore you would have to recreate a single partition on some drive large enough for the offset you originally used. The way things are you never need a partition larger than 2GB and it is actually best to create exactly the partition sizes you need so that all offsets are zero. That way you are free to relocate chunks anyway you want as long as you have used links for the chunk paths in the first place. Don't use the actual partition or logical drive paths, create a directory somewhere and place symbolic links to each chunk's partition/logical drive there and use that path instead. Again it will save you rear one day when you need to relocate a chunk to a different drive or decide to clone your server on another machine for a backup or load sharing and all of the device names are different. Art S. Kagel

In article <378D0BC6.FF8FD9E9@bloomberg.net>, kagel@bloomberg.net (Art S. Kagel) wrote: [cutting] > The only time this is a problem is on a Sun Solaris system without a > volume manager and a drive larger than 14GB since Solaris only permits > seven partitions per drive. [cutting] I believe you can use 8 partitions [0-7] although convention says you don't use partition 2 Paul Watson # I don't suffer from WF Software Ltd. # stress, I'm just Tel. (+44) 1436 674729 # a carrier Fax. (+44) 1436 678693 # www.wfsoftware.co.uk