In message <20021210184206.GA9121@rek.tjls.com>, Thor Lancelot Simon writes:
>On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 10:35:31AM -0800, Bill Studenmund wrote:
>> 
>> Let's see. When I was at Fry's last week, they had 100 GB disks (might
>> have had bigger, I didn't look). 40-disk arrays are available (and have
>> been for quite some time). 40 * 100 GB == 4000 GB which is much more than
>> 2 TiB.
>> 
>> We need to start fixing this.
>
>320GB SCSI disks have been available for some time.  You need only 7 of
>those to exceed 2GB, so a fairly simple, commonplace array configuration
>of two 6-disk shelves each configured as RAID5 with a spare, striped, will
>run into the disk and filesystem size limits.
>
>I've _already_ seen this cause people to use Linux, Solaris, or FreeBSD
>instead of NetBSD.  That's not cool, particularly since people with big
>disk arrays are typically the kind of high-profile or at least well-funded
>sites that can bring lots of other people along with them when they choose
>an operating system.

Right.  And given the rate at which disk densities are increasing, it 
will be common within a couple of years.  Let's get the fix going now, 
so that it's ready when such disk sizes are here for everyone.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com ("Firewalls" book)