From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([140.105.134.102] helo=robin.gentoo.org) by nuthatch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1ID38L-0006SF-1o for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:59:53 +0000 Received: from robin.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.14.0/8.14.0) with SMTP id l6NIwbKp023973; Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:58:37 GMT Received: from cranium.sybase.co.za (sqlprd.sybase.co.za [192.96.139.1]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.14.0/8.14.0) with ESMTP id l6NIruQJ018641 for ; Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:53:57 GMT Received: from localhost (cranium.sybase.co.za [127.0.0.1]) by cranium.sybase.co.za (Postfix) with ESMTP id 98B7A834C1 for ; Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:06:05 +0200 (SAST) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at sybase.co.za Received: from cranium.sybase.co.za ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (cranium.sybase.co.za [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id WzUKEv-jAIh1 for ; Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:06:00 +0200 (SAST) Received: from bard.sybase.co.za (bard.sybase.co.za [192.168.2.6]) by cranium.sybase.co.za (Postfix) with ESMTP id 00AC2834B9 for ; Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:05:59 +0200 (SAST) Received: from nazgul.sybase.co.za ([192.168.2.68]) by bard.sybase.co.za with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959); Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:55:48 +0200 From: Alan McKinnon To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] udev and usb stick/hdd Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:58:53 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.7 References: <106573.2621.qm@web31704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <106573.2621.qm@web31704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200707232058.53523.alan@linuxholdings.co.za> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 23 Jul 2007 18:55:48.0765 (UTC) FILETIME=[155F8CD0:01C7CD5B] X-Archives-Salt: 26c4bb43-0cc4-4546-95c0-78454a76dbbd X-Archives-Hash: 7efe19a86c5ddfbd0228fd12047c92ed On Monday 23 July 2007, maxim wexler wrote: > > Which will destroy your flash device in as little as > > a couple of months > > (voice of experience here), and it probably the > > reason the option was > > removed. > > Ulp! Here's my line from fstab: > > /dev/sdb1 /usb auto > noauto,user,rw,exec,sync 0 0 > > Copied from a forum somewhere. For use of my mp3 > player and digi-camera, both formatted vfat. Does > 'noauto' cancel 'sync'? This way un/mounting must be > done manually. Does that spare me? No. read 'man mount' In a nutshell, noauto means the device will not be automativcally mounted at boot time when the init script runs. sync is a different beast - it means that "All I/O to the file system should be done synchronously." That means that when the kernel say to write to the device, it does get written, and not cached somewhere. Caching it and returning the correct result to indicate that the write was completed would be of course 'async' > I haven't noticed any problems yet. Are you saying > that the damage is incremental, that it accumulates > until a certain point is reached and the device is > kaput? It's only a matter of time and relates to how flash devices work. After many many writes to the same storage cell, it degrades. The good ones are rated to about 100,000 writes per cell. The cheap and nasty ones can be as low as 10,000 writes. You would be amazed how quickly 50,000 writes can happen to the same cell when used as swap for example This is a known issue with flash devices. The correct solution is to ONLY write to the device once you are ready to unmount it. Treat it much like a CD and you'll be OK alan -- Optimists say the glass is half full, Pessimists say the glass is half empty, Developers say wtf is the glass twice as big as it needs to be? Alan McKinnon alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za +27 82, double three seven, one nine three five -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list