[gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[alain.didierjean]

I'm thinking of re-installing Gentoo on an Intel 40 Megs SSD -- excluding the
most often writen dirs like /var, /tmp, /home --. What do you think ? I'll be
glad to hear about previous experiences. What about swap ? Is it safe to have it
on the SSD ?

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[Norman Rieß]

Am 02/16/10 10:28, schrieb alain.didierjean@free.fr:
> I'm thinking of re-installing Gentoo on an Intel 40 Megs SSD -- excluding the
> most often writen dirs like /var, /tmp, /home --. What do you think ? I'll be
> glad to hear about previous experiences. What about swap ? Is it safe to have it
> on the SSD ?
>
>    
Hi,

i have a Gentoo System on SSD running for a while now. No problems.

Regards,
Norman

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 16.02.2010 11:42, schrieb Norman Rieß:
> Am 02/16/10 10:28, schrieb alain.didierjean@free.fr:
>> I'm thinking of re-installing Gentoo on an Intel 40 Megs SSD --
>> excluding the
>> most often writen dirs like /var, /tmp, /home --. What do you think ?
>> I'll be
>> glad to hear about previous experiences. What about swap ? Is it safe
>> to have it
>> on the SSD ?
>>
>>    
> Hi,
> 
> i have a Gentoo System on SSD running for a while now. No problems.

Hmm, I see massive crashes with my Intel Postville G2 80GB, in the last
2 days ... maybe I have received a bad one ... shouldn't be the same for
all of them.

Gentoo didn't detect it anymore ... etc.

I still try to decide how to proceed. Maybe completely reset it and
start from scratch.

Just my current experience with this specific device ...

Stefan

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Dienstag 16 Februar 2010, alain.didierjean@free.fr wrote:
> I'm thinking of re-installing Gentoo on an Intel 40 Megs SSD -- excluding
> the most often writen dirs like /var, /tmp, /home --. What do you think ?
> I'll be glad to hear about previous experiences. What about swap ? Is it
> safe to have it on the SSD ?

I have / on ssd, but /tmp on tmpfs, /var on harddisk and swap on harddisk.

I don't want to wear it down ... and 40gb is not that much.

[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on SSD

[James]

 <alain.didierjean <at> free.fr> writes:


> I'm thinking of re-installing Gentoo on an Intel 40 Megs 
SSD -- excluding the
> most often writen dirs like /var, /tmp, /home --. What do 
you think ? I'll be
> glad to hear about previous experiences. What about swap ? 
Is it safe to have it
> on the SSD ?


I run minimal servers on 4 Gig Compact Flash-2-ide. Similar but not as 
robust as SSD. You should not have any problems, if you PLAN, THINK through
your intended application(s) and ASK questions on this list...... methinks.


caveat emptor,


James

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[Grant]

> I'm thinking of re-installing Gentoo on an Intel 40 Megs SSD -- excluding the
> most often writen dirs like /var, /tmp, /home --. What do you think ? I'll be
> glad to hear about previous experiences. What about swap ? Is it safe to have it
> on the SSD ?

Why exclude the most written dirs?  I thought SSDs were projected to
last longer than HDs?  Also, from what I've read, SLC should last much
longer than MLC.

- Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[Ward Poelmans]

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 22:04, Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:
>  I thought SSDs were projected to
> last longer than HDs?  Also, from what I've read, SLC should last much
> longer than MLC.

It's the other way round: HD's last longer dan SSD's. [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Disadvantages

Regards,

Ward

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[Grant]

>>  I thought SSDs were projected to
>> last longer than HDs?  Also, from what I've read, SLC should last much
>> longer than MLC.
>
> It's the other way round: HD's last longer dan SSD's. [1]
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Disadvantages

Thanks for the link.  I did some Googleing too and I'm really
surprised at what I found.  It sounds like SSDs don't have the
projected longevity they did when I researched this a year or so ago.
I'm troubled by the ever-lurking possibility of an HD failure and I
thought SSDs would be my way out.  Is an HD the best choice for
reliability?

- Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Dienstag 16 Februar 2010, Grant wrote:
> >>  I thought SSDs were projected to
> >> last longer than HDs?  Also, from what I've read, SLC should last much
> >> longer than MLC.
> > 
> > It's the other way round: HD's last longer dan SSD's. [1]
> > 
> > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Disadvantages
> 
> Thanks for the link.  I did some Googleing too and I'm really
> surprised at what I found.  It sounds like SSDs don't have the
> projected longevity they did when I researched this a year or so ago.
> I'm troubled by the ever-lurking possibility of an HD failure and I
> thought SSDs would be my way out.  Is an HD the best choice for
> reliability?
> 
> - Grant

depends. Intel for example slows down the ssd if you write too much to prevent 
premature failure. 

HDD are prone to mechanical failure. SSD not. If you only do moderate writing 
SSD are much more reliable. If you do a lot of writing - douzends of gigabyte 
a day with a lot of overwriting, a HDD might be the better choice.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 16.02.2010 22:27, schrieb Grant:
> It sounds like SSDs don't have the
> projected longevity they did when I researched this a year or so ago.
> I'm troubled by the ever-lurking possibility of an HD failure and I
> thought SSDs would be my way out.  Is an HD the best choice for
> reliability?

I still don't know.

I had the impression that having my home-dir on the ssd lead to
filesystem-problems ... maybe all those tiny writes ... I don't know.

Could be fs-related as well ...

Moved my home back to hdd as recommended by Volker here a few months
ago. Only having my root on the ssd worked OK for quite some time
(sidenote: how to do that on my thinkpad? Having it hdd-free is one main
reason to move to ssd ...)

As mentioned I faced some hefty crashes in the last days ...
unfortunately I wasn't able to record the logs as the drive simply
disappeared. I thought I had the latest "dmesg > myfile" on hdd but it
was empty after a reboot ....

Currently I am back on my raid1-hdd-root ... slower but OK ;-)

The crashes happened with tuxonice-sources-2.6.32 -- dunno, if the
latest ebuild brings some changes helping in this context.

Maybe it's ext4-related as well ... you know, many moving parts in a
modern system ....

Stefan

[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on SSD

[walt]

On 02/16/2010 01:56 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote:

> Maybe it's ext4-related as well ... you know, many moving parts in a
> modern system ....

Are you using ext4 on the hard drives also?  For how long?

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on SSD

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 17.02.2010 20:10, schrieb walt:
> On 02/16/2010 01:56 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote:
> 
>> Maybe it's ext4-related as well ... you know, many moving parts in a
>> modern system ....
> 
> Are you using ext4 on the hard drives also?  For how long?

phew, for quite some time ... I'd have to think a while ...
AFAIK there is no way to read that info from the fs

"formatted on 2009-06-....." or something ;-)

It never behaved like that on the hdd-based raid, no.

No such crashes at all.

S

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on SSD

[Alex Schuster]

Stefan G. Weichinger writes:

> Am 17.02.2010 20:10, schrieb walt:

> > Are you using ext4 on the hard drives also?  For how long?
> 
> phew, for quite some time ... I'd have to think a while ...
> AFAIK there is no way to read that info from the fs
> 
> "formatted on 2009-06-....." or something ;-)

dumpe2fs /dev/root | grep "Filesystem created:"

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo on SSD

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 17.02.2010 23:29, schrieb Alex Schuster:

>> AFAIK there is no way to read that info from the fs
>>
>> "formatted on 2009-06-....." or something ;-)
> 
> dumpe2fs /dev/root | grep "Filesystem created:"

I am impressed ;-)

On the ssd:

Filesystem created:       Mon Jan  4 19:56:09 2010

On the hdd-raid1:

Filesystem created:       Tue Aug  4 00:01:32 2009

Any thoughts that the later fs might be buggy because of some bugs in
ext4 or related tools at that time?

S

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:27:22 -0800, Grant wrote:

> I'm troubled by the ever-lurking possibility of an HD failure and I
> thought SSDs would be my way out.  Is an HD the best choice for
> reliability?

A single drive, be it HD or SSD, is always at risk of failure. If this is
a significant concern, you should be using some form of RAID, along with
regular, automated backups of course.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

There is no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[daid kahl]

On 17 February 2010 06:27, Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>  I thought SSDs were projected to
>>> last longer than HDs?  Also, from what I've read, SLC should last much
>>> longer than MLC.
>>
>> It's the other way round: HD's last longer dan SSD's. [1]
>>
>> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Disadvantages
>
> Thanks for the link.  I did some Googleing too and I'm really
> surprised at what I found.  It sounds like SSDs don't have the
> projected longevity they did when I researched this a year or so ago.
> I'm troubled by the ever-lurking possibility of an HD failure and I
> thought SSDs would be my way out.  Is an HD the best choice for
> reliability?
>
> - Grant
>
>

As far as I know, solid state devices are much more susceptible to
solar flare damage, particularly if you are outside.  This is not
exactly common, but hey.  Of course I also have a theory that not an
insignificant number of computer problems are caused by bit-flips from
cosmic ray induced muon showers, but I digress...

~daid

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[Stroller]

On 22 Feb 2010, at 07:54, daid kahl wrote:
> ...
> As far as I know, solid state devices are much more susceptible to
> solar flare damage, particularly if you are outside.  This is not
> exactly common, but hey.  Of course I also have a theory that not an
> insignificant number of computer problems are caused by bit-flips from
> cosmic ray induced muon showers, but I digress...

I have recently decided to blame solar flares & cosmic ray induced  
muon showers whenever one of my customers asks why their PC is broken.

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 22 February 2010 12:57:27 Stroller wrote:
> On 22 Feb 2010, at 07:54, daid kahl wrote:
> > ...
> > As far as I know, solid state devices are much more susceptible to
> > solar flare damage, particularly if you are outside.  This is not
> > exactly common, but hey.  Of course I also have a theory that not an
> > insignificant number of computer problems are caused by bit-flips from
> > cosmic ray induced muon showers, but I digress...
> 
> I have recently decided to blame solar flares & cosmic ray induced
> muon showers whenever one of my customers asks why their PC is broken.

Flavour of the moment here where I am:

High energy gamma rays from quasars at the edge of the visible known universe 
produced when the universe was a mere 700 million years old.


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on SSD

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:57:27 +0000, Stroller wrote:

> I have recently decided to blame solar flares & cosmic ray induced  
> muon showers whenever one of my customers asks why their PC is broken.

We are coming out of a long period of minimal solar activity with
activity expected to hit a high peak in the next couple of years. It has
already been predicted that this will affect GPS accuracy.

So not only will you have a reason for the failure, you'll also have an
excuse for turning up late to fix it :)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.

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