gpt and mkfs.ext4 seem to be at odds...

[Dale Amon]

I just rcvd a brand new 10TB Ironwolf Red drive; not the first
I have set up by a long shot, but there seems to be an issue
in getting this one formatted.

No matter what I do I end up with messages about misaligned
partitions.

I tried the 16.04 ubuntu server install first as it required
an extra partition set up that I didn't really want, but it
complained if one was not there for grub. I tried various
combinations in the installer and then gave up on it and tried
to finish it manually.

I can get acceptable partitions from parted this way:
   parted -a optimal /dev/sdb
   (parted) unit s
   (parted) mkpart primary linux-swap 1114095 39058859

But mkswap complains:
   mkswap /dev/sdb3
   mkswap: warning: /dev/sdb3 is misaligned
   Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 18.1 GiB (19427713024 bytes)
   no label, UUID=33b9ea94-c7ea-4db1-b3df-dbaf88595b4d

I also have a similar issue with mkfs.ext4. I've checked out
various suggestions such as
https://rainbow.chard.org/2013/01/30/how-to-align-partitions-for-best-performance-using-parted/

# cat /sys/block/sde/queue/optimal_io_size
33553920
# cat /sys/block/sde/queue/minimum_io_size
4096
# cat /sys/block/sde/alignment_offset
0
# cat /sys/block/sde/queue/physical_block_size
4096

"Add optimal_io_size to alignment_offset and divide the result by
physical_block_size"

This gives a non-integer result which I presume the author
intended should be rounded to integer:
  (33553920 + 0) / 4096 = 8191.87 => 8192

I have been trying various combinations of Ubuntu systems and
work arounds for the last 12 hours and I am no closer to making
everything happy than I was when I started.

I've also fiddled with cfdisk and gdisk. Is anyone else having
this problem? My goal with the install is to:

1) Not activate UEFI
2) have an 80 MB /, a swap and the remainder of the 10TB in
    /lib0.
3) Have Ubuntu install, gpt, mkswap and mkfs.ext4 all happy.

-- 
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|   Dale Amon                  Immortal Data                    |
|   CEO             Midland International Air and Space Port    |
| amon at vnl.com       "Data Systems for Deep Space and Time"     |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+