[gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[luis jure]

hello list,

i want to migrate my system, currently in a HD, to a new SSD. i thought it
would be easy, but i decided to read a little before partitioning the disk
(my first SDD) and now i'm really confused...

i intend to have only two partitions in the SSD: one for / and the other
for /home. i have another HD for storage, where i'm going to put swap.

apparently it's better to use a GPT partitioning. are there any catches i
should take into account? what about grub, can i just install it later on
the ssd?

thanks for any comment or pointers, i found so many different "guides"
saying different things that i'm really confused.


best,


lj

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Davide De Prisco]

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I used ssd from workstation to server. I created partitions with fdisk and
then I usually push all in with dd from the old disk. For the grub you can
install it like a normal disk. If you want you can install a new system and
then copy the home directory. The only directory that you can put on a
normal disk is the portage's temp compiling dir. I saw on the WWW that
someone are still working to a new filesystem that can be better to use
with the ssd but I never test it.
Good work.....
Davide
Il giorno 18/lug/2013 23:23, "luis jure" <ljc@internet.com.uy> ha scritto:

>
>
> hello list,
>
> i want to migrate my system, currently in a HD, to a new SSD. i thought it
> would be easy, but i decided to read a little before partitioning the disk
> (my first SDD) and now i'm really confused...
>
> i intend to have only two partitions in the SSD: one for / and the other
> for /home. i have another HD for storage, where i'm going to put swap.
>
> apparently it's better to use a GPT partitioning. are there any catches i
> should take into account? what about grub, can i just install it later on
> the ssd?
>
> thanks for any comment or pointers, i found so many different "guides"
> saying different things that i'm really confused.
>
>
> best,
>
>
> lj
>
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[luis jure]

on 2013-07-18 at 23:40 Davide De Prisco wrote:


> I created partitions with fdisk and then I usually push all in with dd
> from the old disk. For the grub you can install it like a normal disk.

did you use GPT or plain old MBR? so there's nothing special with grub and
gpt partitioned disks?

thanks for your answer,


lj

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Davide De Prisco]

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2013/7/19 luis jure <ljc@internet.com.uy>

> on 2013-07-18 at 23:40 Davide De Prisco wrote:
>
>
> > I created partitions with fdisk and then I usually push all in with dd
> > from the old disk. For the grub you can install it like a normal disk.
>
> did you use GPT or plain old MBR? so there's nothing special with grub and
> gpt partitioned disks?
>
> thanks for your answer,
>
>
> lj
>
> Sorry, I usually use MBR....

Davide

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 4:22 PM, luis jure <ljc@internet.com.uy> wrote:
>
>
> hello list,

Hi!

> i want to migrate my system, currently in a HD, to a new SSD. i thought it
> would be easy, but i decided to read a little before partitioning the disk
> (my first SDD) and now i'm really confused...
>
> i intend to have only two partitions in the SSD: one for / and the other
> for /home. i have another HD for storage, where i'm going to put swap.

Sounds like a good plan. I used the same strategy here.

> apparently it's better to use a GPT partitioning. are there any catches i
> should take into account? what about grub, can i just install it later on
> the ssd?

GPT is not required, if you use MBR it should work just as well. If
you use GPT you must enable GUID partition table support in your
kernel and ensure your boot loader supports it.

> thanks for any comment or pointers, i found so many different "guides"
> saying different things that i'm really confused.

Here are the basic steps I used for doing the same thing:

1. partition SSD (start sector at a multiple of 1MB to ensure proper alignment)
2. format new partitions using discard-capable filesystem like ext4, xfs, btrfs
3. mount them in a temporary mount point
4. rsync your filesystem from old drive to new drive
5. edit /etc/fstab on the new drive to use the new mount points
6. edit boot loader config to point to correct drive
7. install boot loader on new drive if it becomes your new boot device
8. (optionally) swap drive cables so the new drive shows up first if
it is your new boot device

Depending on whether you use UUID, labels, or device names you may not
need to change names or swap cables in your computer so drives show up
in the correct order.

Good luck :)

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[William Kenworthy]

On 19/07/13 06:23, Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 4:22 PM, luis jure <ljc@internet.com.uy> wrote:
>>
>>
>> hello list,
> 
> Hi!
> 
>> i want to migrate my system, currently in a HD, to a new SSD. i thought it
>> would be easy, but i decided to read a little before partitioning the disk
>> (my first SDD) and now i'm really confused...
>>
>> i intend to have only two partitions in the SSD: one for / and the other
>> for /home. i have another HD for storage, where i'm going to put swap.
> 
> Sounds like a good plan. I used the same strategy here.
> 
>> apparently it's better to use a GPT partitioning. are there any catches i
>> should take into account? what about grub, can i just install it later on
>> the ssd?
> 
> GPT is not required, if you use MBR it should work just as well. If
> you use GPT you must enable GUID partition table support in your
> kernel and ensure your boot loader supports it.
> 
>> thanks for any comment or pointers, i found so many different "guides"
>> saying different things that i'm really confused.
> 
> Here are the basic steps I used for doing the same thing:
> 
> 1. partition SSD (start sector at a multiple of 1MB to ensure proper alignment)
> 2. format new partitions using discard-capable filesystem like ext4, xfs, btrfs
> 3. mount them in a temporary mount point
> 4. rsync your filesystem from old drive to new drive
> 5. edit /etc/fstab on the new drive to use the new mount points
> 6. edit boot loader config to point to correct drive
> 7. install boot loader on new drive if it becomes your new boot device
> 8. (optionally) swap drive cables so the new drive shows up first if
> it is your new boot device
> 
> Depending on whether you use UUID, labels, or device names you may not
> need to change names or swap cables in your computer so drives show up
> in the correct order.
> 
> Good luck :)
> 

Apple laptop (ssd only) - boot, swap and /.  btrfs, very fast and stable
but only gets light use.

Storage server for data and VM's with an (intel) ssd for boot, swap and
OS with data on WD 2G green drives (ceph cluster).  btrfs was a
disaster, etx4 is holding up ok but being an ssd I cant use reiserfs
which is my first choice, particularly where a filesystem gets hammered.
 I tried a number of configurations and the ceph journals are a lot
faster on ssd, and swap on ssd is also a big speedup (including
hibernate/resume).  Been running for few months now.

With the apple I dont get a choice where to put swap (which even with 8G
ram gets used) but tests between the server ssd and a 10000rpm spinner
sees the ssd win hands down most of the time.  The ceph journals are
definitely slower on spinner ... but did seem less prone to disaster.

My main point is ssd's are fast, but make sure you have good backups if
you are stressing them :)

BillK

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[luis jure]

on 2013-07-18 at 17:23 Paul Hartman wrote:


> Hi!

hi paul, thanks for your detailed answer!

> 1. partition SSD (start sector at a multiple of 1MB to ensure proper
> alignment) 2. format new partitions using discard-capable filesystem
> like ext4, xfs, btrfs
yes and yes (using ext4)


> 4. rsync your filesystem from old drive to new drive
yes, i found some info on that. i'm at that right now.


> 5. edit /etc/fstab on the new drive to use the new mount points
yes, i'm using labels, so that part is easy.


> 6. edit boot loader config to point to correct drive
> 7. install boot loader on new drive if it becomes your new boot device
well, it's been a long time since i last installed a new system... i'll
have to re-check the docs about that.


best,


lj

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

luis jure wrote:
>
> hello list,
>
> i want to migrate my system, currently in a HD, to a new SSD. i thought it
> would be easy, but i decided to read a little before partitioning the disk
> (my first SDD) and now i'm really confused...
>
> i intend to have only two partitions in the SSD: one for / and the other
> for /home. i have another HD for storage, where i'm going to put swap.
>
> apparently it's better to use a GPT partitioning. are there any catches i
> should take into account? what about grub, can i just install it later on
> the ssd?
>
> thanks for any comment or pointers, i found so many different "guides"
> saying different things that i'm really confused.
>
>
> best,
>
>
> lj
>
>
>


Do you really want to put /home on a SSD?

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Alan McKinnon]

On 19/07/2013 08:56, Dale wrote:
> luis jure wrote:
>>
>> hello list,
>>
>> i want to migrate my system, currently in a HD, to a new SSD. i
>> thought it
>> would be easy, but i decided to read a little before partitioning the
>> disk
>> (my first SDD) and now i'm really confused...
>>
>> i intend to have only two partitions in the SSD: one for / and the other
>> for /home. i have another HD for storage, where i'm going to put swap.
>>
>> apparently it's better to use a GPT partitioning. are there any catches i
>> should take into account? what about grub, can i just install it later on
>> the ssd?
>>
>> thanks for any comment or pointers, i found so many different "guides"
>> saying different things that i'm really confused.
>>
>>
>> best,
>>
>>
>> lj
>>
>>
>>
> 
> 
> Do you really want to put /home on a SSD?


Why not?

/home is the most frequently-read directory on most systems, and SSD is
ideal for that.

If you are concerned about wear-levelling, /home is not the danger point


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 19/07/2013 08:56, Dale wrote:
>> luis jure wrote:
>>> hello list,
>>>
>>> i want to migrate my system, currently in a HD, to a new SSD. i
>>> thought it
>>> would be easy, but i decided to read a little before partitioning the
>>> disk
>>> (my first SDD) and now i'm really confused...
>>>
>>> i intend to have only two partitions in the SSD: one for / and the other
>>> for /home. i have another HD for storage, where i'm going to put swap.
>>>
>>> apparently it's better to use a GPT partitioning. are there any catches i
>>> should take into account? what about grub, can i just install it later on
>>> the ssd?
>>>
>>> thanks for any comment or pointers, i found so many different "guides"
>>> saying different things that i'm really confused.
>>>
>>>
>>> best,
>>>
>>>
>>> lj
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Do you really want to put /home on a SSD?
>
> Why not?
>
> /home is the most frequently-read directory on most systems, and SSD is
> ideal for that.
>
> If you are concerned about wear-levelling, /home is not the danger point
>
>

Interesting.  I'm not sure I would want mine on a SSD even if it would 
fit on one.  The only part that might help would be my .kde and .mozilla 
directory.

I'm going to get me one of these things one of these days tho.  I almost 
got one a while back that was on sale but they had sold out. :/

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 19 Jul 2013 03:22:11 -0500, Dale wrote:

> >> Do you really want to put /home on a SSD?  
> >
> > Why not?
> >
> > /home is the most frequently-read directory on most systems, and SSD
> > is ideal for that.
> >
> > If you are concerned about wear-levelling, /home is not the danger
> > point

> Interesting.  I'm not sure I would want mine on a SSD even if it would 
> fit on one.  The only part that might help would be my .kde
> and .mozilla directory.

SSDs are not like USB flash drives, and it's been years since I managed
to wear one of those out (mainly due to a kernel bug). They have
lifetimes similar to spinny disks these days.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

If you got the words it does not mean you got the knowledge.

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Jul 2013 03:22:11 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>>>> Do you really want to put /home on a SSD?
>>> Why not?
>>>
>>> /home is the most frequently-read directory on most systems, and SSD
>>> is ideal for that.
>>>
>>> If you are concerned about wear-levelling, /home is not the danger
>>> point
>> Interesting.  I'm not sure I would want mine on a SSD even if it would
>> fit on one.  The only part that might help would be my .kde
>> and .mozilla directory.
> SSDs are not like USB flash drives, and it's been years since I managed
> to wear one of those out (mainly due to a kernel bug). They have
> lifetimes similar to spinny disks these days.
>
>

Now I really feel about better getting one.  That was my concern and 
reason for the question.  I'm sure /home gets its share of reads and 
writes and was thinking the writes would cause a problem over time. 
Maybe they are better now than they was a while back.

Thanks for the update.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Randolph Maaßen]

2013/7/19 Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>
>
> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 19 Jul 2013 03:22:11 -0500, Dale wrote:
>>
>>>>> Do you really want to put /home on a SSD?
>>>>
>>>> Why not?
>>>>
>>>> /home is the most frequently-read directory on most systems, and SSD
>>>> is ideal for that.
>>>>
>>>> If you are concerned about wear-levelling, /home is not the danger
>>>> point
>>>
>>> Interesting.  I'm not sure I would want mine on a SSD even if it would
>>> fit on one.  The only part that might help would be my .kde
>>> and .mozilla directory.
>>
>> SSDs are not like USB flash drives, and it's been years since I managed
>> to wear one of those out (mainly due to a kernel bug). They have
>> lifetimes similar to spinny disks these days.
>>
>>
>
> Now I really feel about better getting one.  That was my concern and reason for the question.  I'm sure /home gets its share of reads and writes and was thinking the writes would cause a problem over time. Maybe they are better now than they was a while back.
>
> Thanks for the update.
>
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)
>
> --
> I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
>
>

I came across the topic of SSD writes when setting up my laptop with
an ssd and the question, is a tmpfs vor /var/tmp/portage or swapfile
on SSD a good idea? At some point I found this at ArchWiki page about
SSDs[1], but I don't know how up to date or correct this is.

"A 32GB SSD with a mediocre 10x write amplification factor, a standard
10000 write/erase cycle, and 10GB of data written per day, would get
an 8 years life expectancy. It gets better with bigger SSDs and modern
controllers with less write amplification."

Now I have /var/tmp/portage on tmpfs and a swapfile on the SSD, but I
think the drive will last for the next years so i don't have to worry
much about it.

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives

--
Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards

Randolph Maaßen

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Helmut Jarausch]

On 07/19/2013 11:33:33 AM, Randolph Maaßen wrote:
> 2013/7/19 Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>
> >
> > Neil Bothwick wrote:
> >> SSDs are not like USB flash drives, and it's been years since I  
> managed
> >> to wear one of those out (mainly due to a kernel bug). They have
> >> lifetimes similar to spinny disks these days.

Perhaps this recent thread makes it clearer :
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/02/19/1326239/taking-a-hard-look-at-ssd-write-endurance

Helmut

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Bruce Hill]

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 03:55:37AM -0500, Dale wrote:
> 
> Now I really feel about better getting one.  That was my concern and 
> reason for the question.  I'm sure /home gets its share of reads and 
> writes and was thinking the writes would cause a problem over time. 
> Maybe they are better now than they was a while back.
> 
> Thanks for the update.
> 
> Dale

The OCZs I've purchased have 3-5 year warranty, also. Most of the mechanical
hard drives you purchase today only have one year. I won't buy any SATA
mechanical drives except Hitachi.
-- 
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126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.                                                                                                                                                          
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?                                                                                                                                                                                        
A: Top-posting.                                                                                                                                                                                                                
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Paul Hartman]

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Bruce Hill
<daddy@happypenguincomputers.com> wrote:
> I won't buy any SATA
> mechanical drives except Hitachi.

Hitachi's storage division was sold off and split up last year. Their
2.5" HDD and SDD lines now belong to Western Digital (who continue to
sell the *Star models under the "HGST" brand name), while their 3.5"
HDD lines now belong to Toshiba who are selling them under the Toshiba
brand name.

Toshiba never made 3.5" HDD's before, and they purchased Hitachi's
brands, designs, patents and factories relating to 3.5" HDDs. Many of
the Toshiba HDD's being sold today, in Toshiba boxes with Toshiba
labels and new model numbers, in fact still have the Hitachi brand
name and model number embedded in the chipset when you hook it up to
your computer.

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[luis jure]

on 2013-07-19 at 12:47 Bruce Hill wrote:

> The OCZs I've purchased have 3-5 year warranty, also. Most of the
> mechanical hard drives you purchase today only have one year. I won't
> buy any SATA mechanical drives except Hitachi.

i got 5 years on a 4Tb western digital caviar black i bought a couple of
days ago. for my part i have been buying only WD for internal HDDs for
many years now (like more than 10 years).

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

luis jure wrote:
> on 2013-07-19 at 12:47 Bruce Hill wrote:
>
>> The OCZs I've purchased have 3-5 year warranty, also. Most of the
>> mechanical hard drives you purchase today only have one year. I won't
>> buy any SATA mechanical drives except Hitachi.
> i got 5 years on a 4Tb western digital caviar black i bought a couple of
> days ago. for my part i have been buying only WD for internal HDDs for
> many years now (like more than 10 years).
>
>

I have drives that are very old and still running.  The only drive I 
have ever had to really fail, WD.  It had a lot more than 5 years of run 
time too.  I generally run my rig 24/7 here.  That drive was about 8 
years old or maybe older.  It also wasn't in the best place for cooling 
either, unlike my new Cooler Master HAF-932 case where the fans blow 
directly on the drives.

Warranty is only the time it is guaranteed to work not how long it will 
work.  I still buy WD drives too.  I got several of them buggers here.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Paul Hartman]

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 1:56 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you really want to put /home on a SSD?

My first step into SSD on my desktop was to put everything-but-home
onto it. I left home on a HDD. Speedup was very noticeable! Especially
portage-related things were very much faster (accessing thousands of
small files).

I later added a second SSD for home, but kept the old HDD for huge
directories like photos, videos, downloads, ISOs/virtual disk images,
Steam games folder, etc. There was honestly not a very appreciable
speedup from adding the home SSD, in my opinion. But that probably
depends highly on individual usage patterns.

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[luis jure]

on 2013-07-19 at 01:56 Dale wrote:

> Do you really want to put /home on a SSD?

well, not actually the whole /home, the SSD is too small for that. i'm not
sure yet, i might keep /home on a HDD and mount the partition on the SSD as
a directory under /home for some special uses. or the other way around...

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

luis jure wrote:
> on 2013-07-19 at 01:56 Dale wrote:
>
>> Do you really want to put /home on a SSD?
> well, not actually the whole /home, the SSD is too small for that. i'm not
> sure yet, i might keep /home on a HDD and mount the partition on the SSD as
> a directory under /home for some special uses. or the other way around...
>
>


Size was one issue I thought of but I was more concerned with the wear 
and tear part but that was explained by others.  It seems that is not as 
much a issue any more.

At one time, I had a /data directory.  I stored large stuff there: 
camera pics, videos, audio stuff and such.  If you put /home on SSD, you 
could always put the larger stuff on another mount point.  One thing 
about Linux, you can mount stuff wherever you want.

Post back how it works out and any speed improvements you see.  I'm 
really curious since I would like to get one that is at least big enough 
for the OS itself.  My /home is over 1Tb, that is Tb too. I'm not buying 
one big enough for all that.  lol

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Mick]

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On Friday 19 Jul 2013 17:43:39 Dale wrote:
> luis jure wrote:
> > on 2013-07-19 at 01:56 Dale wrote:
> >> Do you really want to put /home on a SSD?
> > 
> > well, not actually the whole /home, the SSD is too small for that. i'm
> > not sure yet, i might keep /home on a HDD and mount the partition on the
> > SSD as a directory under /home for some special uses. or the other way
> > around...
> 
> Size was one issue I thought of but I was more concerned with the wear
> and tear part but that was explained by others.  It seems that is not as
> much a issue any more.
> 
> At one time, I had a /data directory.  I stored large stuff there:
> camera pics, videos, audio stuff and such.  If you put /home on SSD, you
> could always put the larger stuff on another mount point.  One thing
> about Linux, you can mount stuff wherever you want.
> 
> Post back how it works out and any speed improvements you see.  I'm
> really curious since I would like to get one that is at least big enough
> for the OS itself.  My /home is over 1Tb, that is Tb too. I'm not buying
> one big enough for all that.  lol
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-)

I have a MUCH smaller /home than Dale and on a new box I was thinking of 
having it on a HDD, along with all things portage related.  I typically resync 
3 -4 times a week but I am not sure how much erase/write cycles this 
represents.  Also, /home is written all the time with mail and various 
application profile folders, browser cache and what have you.  That's why I 
was thinking that /usr/portage, /var/tmp/portage, /var/log, /home and /swap 
were candidates for HDD.

I guess the rest under / does not change that often and a weekly or even 
monthly back up would be all that is necessary to facilitate recovery when the 
SSD dies on me.

Am I being too cautious with current technology SSDs?

BTW, unless anyone advises differently, I was thinking of buying a SanDisk 
Extreme II, SATA III, 2.5" 240GB SSD.  I read that its SLC cache improves 
speed and reliability, but I don't know if true.

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 19 Jul 2013 19:45:36 +0100, Mick wrote:

> I have a MUCH smaller /home than Dale and on a new box I was thinking
> of having it on a HDD, along with all things portage related.  I
> typically resync 3 -4 times a week but I am not sure how much
> erase/write cycles this represents.  Also, /home is written all the
> time with mail and various application profile folders, browser cache
> and what have you.

Which is why you want it on the fastest device possible. The whole point
of a faster drive is to speed up IO intensive operations. If you then
consign specifically those operations to the old HDD, why bother?

Thing like video files can go on a hard drive because they are read far
more slowly than the drive's speed anyway. 

> Am I being too cautious with current technology SSDs?

Yes.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

During a raid on a local chemist's shop, 2000 Viagra tablets were stolen
Police are looking for hardened criminals!

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Stroller]

On 19 July 2013, at 19:58, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Jul 2013 19:45:36 +0100, Mick wrote:
> 
>> I have a MUCH smaller /home than Dale and on a new box I was thinking
>> of having it on a HDD, along with all things portage related. 
>> …  /home is written all the
>> time with mail and various application profile folders, browser cache
>> and what have you.
> 
> Which is why you want it on the fastest device possible. The whole point
> of a faster drive is to speed up IO intensive operations. If you then
> consign specifically those operations to the old HDD, why bother?

I don't know how any Linux apps compare, but I've found on the Mac in the past that defragmentation of a single browser file - I think it was the history file, and I think it was around 100meg in size - made a significant difference to Safari's behaviour. 

The difference can be so much on a heavily fragmented system that the browser could become unusable, yet snappy and responsive after copying the file and replacing it.

This really illustrated to me how unaware I was of SSD / hard-disk behaviour. I aways thought I knew when ~ was being accessed - that's when I'm opening a photo or saving a letter, right? Well, I was wrong - files in home are being read and written not only every time the browser opens a webpage, but also lots of other times we're unaware of the activity.

IMO this is why it's flawed to try and pick and mix which directories to put on an SSD. I mean, if you've ripped your DVD collection and you have terrabytes of movies then it's easy to exclude those, but nevertheless it's easy to accumulate so much crap that it'll no longer fit on an affordable SSD.

IMO it should be left to the o/s to decide what should be on a spinning platter and what on an SSD. I don't know if these are yet good enough, but they're what I'd look at first:

http://www.h-online.com/open/features/What-s-new-in-Linux-3-9-1845705.html

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM2ODM

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Paul Hartman]

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 1:45 PM, Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday 19 Jul 2013 17:43:39 Dale wrote:
>> luis jure wrote:
>> > on 2013-07-19 at 01:56 Dale wrote:
>> >> Do you really want to put /home on a SSD?
>> >
>> > well, not actually the whole /home, the SSD is too small for that. i'm
>> > not sure yet, i might keep /home on a HDD and mount the partition on the
>> > SSD as a directory under /home for some special uses. or the other way
>> > around...
>>
>> Size was one issue I thought of but I was more concerned with the wear
>> and tear part but that was explained by others.  It seems that is not as
>> much a issue any more.
>>
>> At one time, I had a /data directory.  I stored large stuff there:
>> camera pics, videos, audio stuff and such.  If you put /home on SSD, you
>> could always put the larger stuff on another mount point.  One thing
>> about Linux, you can mount stuff wherever you want.
>>
>> Post back how it works out and any speed improvements you see.  I'm
>> really curious since I would like to get one that is at least big enough
>> for the OS itself.  My /home is over 1Tb, that is Tb too. I'm not buying
>> one big enough for all that.  lol
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-)
>
> I have a MUCH smaller /home than Dale and on a new box I was thinking of
> having it on a HDD, along with all things portage related.  I typically resync
> 3 -4 times a week but I am not sure how much erase/write cycles this
> represents.  Also, /home is written all the time with mail and various
> application profile folders, browser cache and what have you.  That's why I
> was thinking that /usr/portage, /var/tmp/portage, /var/log, /home and /swap
> were candidates for HDD.

/usr/portage is one of the things that benefits the most from being on
a SSD, thousands of tiny files scattered all over the place. It really
is a tremendous difference compared to running portage on a HDD.

> I guess the rest under / does not change that often and a weekly or even
> monthly back up would be all that is necessary to facilitate recovery when the
> SSD dies on me.
>
> Am I being too cautious with current technology SSDs?

I think you are. Unless you are moving massive terabytes of data
across your drive on a constant basis I would not worry about regular
everyday write activity being a problem. I think the SSD is more
likely to die due to electrical shock or surge than by normal wear and
tear. Of course backups are always a good idea, no matter what. :)

Old SSDs that did not support TRIM would suffer write amplification
after a certain amount of data had been written to them, but any
modern SSD and modern OS will keep it nice and tidy.

> BTW, unless anyone advises differently, I was thinking of buying a SanDisk
> Extreme II, SATA III, 2.5" 240GB SSD.  I read that its SLC cache improves
> speed and reliability, but I don't know if true.

My personal experience is with these:

Samsung 830, 128GB
Samsung 840, 250GB
Intel 330, 180GB
Sandisk Extreme, 120GB
Sandisk Extreme, 240GB

(note mine are the older Extreme, not the new Extreme II's that you're
looking at)

The Samsung 830 and Intel 330 are the winners, they consistently had
the best random read/write performance in my testing, as well as
intangible "feeling" of responsiveness.

The Samsung 840 had lower write speeds (because it is TLC).

The Sandisk Extreme had a bit worse random I/O performance than the
leaders, but still not bad. The worst part about the Sandisks was that
it took them forever to release a firmware upgrade. They used the
infamous buggy Sandforce firmware, which every other SSD maker
released fixes for, but it took Sandisk what seemed like an eternity
to finally make it available.

SSDs, VM SANs & RAID - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Tanstaafl]

On 2013-07-19 3:02 PM, Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think you are. Unless you are moving massive terabytes of data
> across your drive on a constant basis I would not worry about regular
> everyday write activity being a problem.

I have a question regarding the use of SSDs in a VM SAN...

We are considering buying a lower-end SAN (two actually, one for each of 
our locations), with lots of 2.5" bays, and using SSDs.

The two questions that come to mind are:

Is this a good use of SSDs? I honestly don't know if the running VMs 
would benefit from the faster IO or not (I *think* the answer is a 
resounding yes)?

Next is RAID...

I've avoided RAID5 (and RAID6) like the plague ever since I almost got 
bit really badly by a multiple drive failure... luckily, the RAID5 had 
just finished rebuilding successfully after the first drive failed, 
before the second drive failed. I can't tell you how many years I aged 
that day while it was rebuilding after replacing the second failed drive.

Ever since, I've always used RAID10.

So... with SSDs, I think another advantage would be much faster rebuilds 
after a failed drive? So I could maybe start using RAID6 (would survive 
two simultaneous disk failures), and not lose so much available storage 
(50% with RAID10)?

Last... while researching this, I ran across a very interesting article 
that I'd appreciate hearing opinions on.

"The Benefits of a Flash Only, SAN-less Virtual Architecture":

http://www.storage-switzerland.com/Articles/Entries/2012/9/20_The_Benefits_of_a_Flash_Only,_SAN-less_Virtual_Architecture.html

or

http://tinyurl.com/khwuspo

Anyway, I look forward to hearing thoughts on this...

Re: SSDs, VM SANs & RAID - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Pandu Poluan]

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On Jul 20, 2013 9:27 PM, "Tanstaafl" <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
>
> On 2013-07-19 3:02 PM, Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I think you are. Unless you are moving massive terabytes of data
>> across your drive on a constant basis I would not worry about regular
>> everyday write activity being a problem.
>
>
> I have a question regarding the use of SSDs in a VM SAN...
>
> We are considering buying a lower-end SAN (two actually, one for each of
our locations), with lots of 2.5" bays, and using SSDs.
>
> The two questions that come to mind are:
>
> Is this a good use of SSDs? I honestly don't know if the running VMs
would benefit from the faster IO or not (I *think* the answer is a
resounding yes)?
>

Yes, the I/O would be faster, although how significant totally depends on
your workload pattern.

The bottleneck would be the LAN, though. The peak bandwidth of SATA is 6
GB/s = 48 Gbps. You'll need active/active multipathing and/or bonded
interfaces to cater for that firehose.

> Next is RAID...
>
> I've avoided RAID5 (and RAID6) like the plague ever since I almost got
bit really badly by a multiple drive failure... luckily, the RAID5 had just
finished rebuilding successfully after the first drive failed, before the
second drive failed. I can't tell you how many years I aged that day while
it was rebuilding after replacing the second failed drive.
>
> Ever since, I've always used RAID10.
>

Ahh, the Cadillac of RAID arrays :-)

> So... with SSDs, I think another advantage would be much faster rebuilds
after a failed drive? So I could maybe start using RAID6 (would survive two
simultaneous disk failures), and not lose so much available storage (50%
with RAID10)?
>

If you're using ZFS with spinning disks as its vdev 'elements', resilvering
(rebuilding the RAID array) would be somewhat faster because ZFS knows what
needs to be resilvered (i.e., used blocks) and skip over parts that don't
need to be resilvered (i.e., unused blocks).

> Last... while researching this, I ran across a very interesting article
that I'd appreciate hearing opinions on.
>
> "The Benefits of a Flash Only, SAN-less Virtual Architecture":
>
>
http://www.storage-switzerland.com/Articles/Entries/2012/9/20_The_Benefits_of_a_Flash_Only,_SAN-less_Virtual_Architecture.html
>
> or
>
> http://tinyurl.com/khwuspo
>
> Anyway, I look forward to hearing thoughts on this...
>

Interesting...

Another alternative for performance is to buy a bunch of spinning disks
(let's say, 12 of them 'enterprise'-grade disks), join them into a ZFS Pool
of 5 mirrored vdevs (that is, a RAID10 a la ZFS) + 2 spares, then use 4
SSDs to hold the ZFS Cache and Intent Log.

The capital expenditure for the gained capacity should be cheaper, but with
a very acceptable performance.

Rgds,
--

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 19.07.2013 21:02, schrieb Paul Hartman:

> Old SSDs that did not support TRIM would suffer write amplification
> after a certain amount of data had been written to them, but any
> modern SSD and modern OS will keep it nice and tidy.

What's the "best practice" now for TRIM?

I changed to manual "fstrim -v /" back then as they wrote that the
fstab-options weren't the right way of doing it.

Any news on this?

I have root-fs on ext4, btw ...

Stefan

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Paul Hartman]

On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 4:42 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger <lists@xunil.at> wrote:
> Am 19.07.2013 21:02, schrieb Paul Hartman:
>
>> Old SSDs that did not support TRIM would suffer write amplification
>> after a certain amount of data had been written to them, but any
>> modern SSD and modern OS will keep it nice and tidy.
>
> What's the "best practice" now for TRIM?
>
> I changed to manual "fstrim -v /" back then as they wrote that the
> fstab-options weren't the right way of doing it.
>
> Any news on this?
>
> I have root-fs on ext4, btw ...

I think it depends on your usage patterns. "discard" will trim unused
space immediately as files are deleted. Putting fstrim in your cron
jobs will wait to free all unused space at once.

If you delete many files, or large files, you may notice performance
slowdowns by using discard.  On the other hand, if your SSD is near
full you may benefit from discard to allow faster write speed before
the cron job runs.

As far as I remember, some filesystems don't support "discard" option,
but do support fstrim. So fstrim job may be "safer" as generic
advice... and it was older advice, before "discard" existed, so old
SSD guides may refer to it by default.

I personally use "discard" with ext4 and btrfs, but I have not done
tests or have evidence that it is the best choice for me. It's simply
what I chose and never changed it. :)

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 23.07.2013 00:22, schrieb Paul Hartman:

> I personally use "discard" with ext4 and btrfs, but I have not done
> tests or have evidence that it is the best choice for me. It's simply
> what I chose and never changed it. :)

Thanks, Paul!

More of a "I do it MY way" than a generic "best practice for all as
recommended by upstream devs", right?  ;-)

S

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Paul Hartman]

On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 5:26 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger <lists@xunil.at> wrote:
> Am 23.07.2013 00:22, schrieb Paul Hartman:
>
>> I personally use "discard" with ext4 and btrfs, but I have not done
>> tests or have evidence that it is the best choice for me. It's simply
>> what I chose and never changed it. :)
>
> Thanks, Paul!
>
> More of a "I do it MY way" than a generic "best practice for all as
> recommended by upstream devs", right?  ;-)

Basically I think it is like so many things in Linux, "use whatever
works best for you" :)

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 19 Jul 2013 11:43:39 -0500, Dale wrote:

> My /home is over 1Tb, that is Tb too. I'm not buying 
> one big enough for all that.

1Tb is only 125GB, well within the capacity of current SSDs :P

Switching to an SSD, particularly on a laptop where you can't add a
second drive, really helps you decide how much of the content of ~ you
really need.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Weird enough for government work.

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Jul 2013 11:43:39 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>> My /home is over 1Tb, that is Tb too. I'm not buying
>> one big enough for all that.
> 1Tb is only 125GB, well within the capacity of current SSDs :P
>
> Switching to an SSD, particularly on a laptop where you can't add a
> second drive, really helps you decide how much of the content of ~ you
> really need.
>
>

Mine is mostly videos and some smaller amount of pics.  1 Tb is 125Gb?  
1Tb is 1,000Gb or so.  I would also be concerned about the cost of one 
that large too.

Confused.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[luis jure]

on 2013-07-19 at 18:03 Dale wrote:

> Mine is mostly videos and some smaller amount of pics.  1 Tb is 125Gb?  
> 1Tb is 1,000Gb or so. 

hehe... i guess neil meant that in average for each Tb you have in your
disk, only 125Mb is really important or useful. the rest is crap that just
piles up...

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

luis jure wrote:
> on 2013-07-19 at 18:03 Dale wrote:
>
>> Mine is mostly videos and some smaller amount of pics.  1 Tb is 125Gb?
>> 1Tb is 1,000Gb or so.
> hehe... i guess neil meant that in average for each Tb you have in your
> disk, only 125Mb is really important or useful. the rest is crap that just
> piles up...
>
>

Ahh, that makes sense.  Thing is, I can't get rid of family photos or my 
videos.  Nope, just ain't happening.

Size  Used  Avail  Use%  Mounted on
2.7T   1.2T   1.6T   43%    /home

I think first, I'm going to get another 3 or 4Tb drive to back up what I 
got.  ;-)  Then I can get a SSD unless I see another really good sale.

I think I could get my OS on a 30Gb SSD with no problem and plenty of 
breathing room.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[luis jure]

on 2013-07-19 at 18:39 Dale wrote:

> Ahh, that makes sense.  Thing is, I can't get rid of family photos or my 
> videos.  Nope, just ain't happening.

yeah, the same here... my 2Tb HD was almost full, so i bought a new 4Tb
disk. and it's a nice feeling having all that space free...


> I think I could get my OS on a 30Gb SSD with no problem and plenty of 
> breathing room.

i had a 30Tb partition for my system in my old HDD, and the breathing
space wasn't quite "plenty". often i found myself with less than the 6Gb
free required by libreoffice to compile, and i had to clean up a bit.
other than that yes, 30Gb is more than enough. in this new SSD i just
installed i made a partition of 40Gb for / .

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

luis jure wrote:
> on 2013-07-19 at 18:39 Dale wrote:
>
>
>> I think I could get my OS on a 30Gb SSD with no problem and plenty of
>> breathing room.
> i had a 30Tb partition for my system in my old HDD, and the breathing
> space wasn't quite "plenty". often i found myself with less than the 6Gb
> free required by libreoffice to compile, and i had to clean up a bit.
> other than that yes, 30Gb is more than enough. in this new SSD i just
> installed i made a partition of 40Gb for / .
>
>

I have portages work directory on tmpfs so no issue there.  My only 
thing, I separate /, /usr, /var portages tree and such.  Of course, if I 
put them on LVM, except for / itself, then I can move things around a 
bit and still not have a init thingy to deal with.

My current setup while snipping the useless stuff:

root@fireball / # mount
/dev/sda6 on / type ext4 (rw,commit=0)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext2 (rw)
/dev/mapper/OS-usr on /usr type ext4 (rw,commit=0)
/dev/mapper/OS-var on /var type ext4 (rw,commit=0)
/dev/mapper/home-home on /home type ext4 (rw,commit=0)
/dev/mapper/backup-backup on /backup type ext4 (rw,commit=0)
tmpfs on /var/tmp/portage type tmpfs (rw,noatime)
root@fireball / #

I may try to get a 60Gb or something tho, just in case.  Depends on what 
is on sale tho.  ;-)

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Bruce Hill]

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 08:58:59PM -0300, luis jure wrote:
> 
> i had a 30Tb partition for my system in my old HDD, and the breathing
> space wasn't quite "plenty". often i found myself with less than the 6Gb
> free required by libreoffice to compile, and i had to clean up a bit.
> other than that yes, 30Gb is more than enough. in this new SSD i just
> installed i made a partition of 40Gb for / .

Stop using disk and build in RAM:

tmpfs           /var/tmp/portage        tmpfs           size=7000M,nr_inodes=1M                 0 0
tmpfs           /dev/shm                tmpfs           nodev,nosuid,noexec     0 0

workstation ~ # free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         15798       3711      12087          0          0        937
-/+ buffers/cache:       2772      13025
Swap:         8103          0       8103
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.                                                                                                                                                          
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?                                                                                                                                                                                        
A: Top-posting.                                                                                                                                                                                                                
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

Bruce Hill wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 08:58:59PM -0300, luis jure wrote:
>> i had a 30Tb partition for my system in my old HDD, and the breathing
>> space wasn't quite "plenty". often i found myself with less than the 6Gb
>> free required by libreoffice to compile, and i had to clean up a bit.
>> other than that yes, 30Gb is more than enough. in this new SSD i just
>> installed i made a partition of 40Gb for / .
> Stop using disk and build in RAM:
>
> tmpfs           /var/tmp/portage        tmpfs           size=7000M,nr_inodes=1M                 0 0
> tmpfs           /dev/shm                tmpfs           nodev,nosuid,noexec     0 0
>
> workstation ~ # free -m
>               total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:         15798       3711      12087          0          0        937
> -/+ buffers/cache:       2772      13025
> Swap:         8103          0       8103

He may not have enough to do that tho.  Some folks only have 4Gbs or 
less still.  That won't be enough for LOo.  Heck, my 16Gbs wasn't enough 
at one time.  I had to either let it be on HDD or set it to a higher 
amount than the default half.

I also tested the time difference once before, it didn't really make 
much difference.  It just saves wear on a drive is all.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Bruce Hill]

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 08:34:27PM -0500, Dale wrote:
> > Stop using disk and build in RAM:
> >
> > tmpfs           /var/tmp/portage        tmpfs           size=7000M,nr_inodes=1M                 0 0
> > tmpfs           /dev/shm                tmpfs           nodev,nosuid,noexec     0 0
> >
> > workstation ~ # free -m
> >               total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> > Mem:         15798       3711      12087          0          0        937
> > -/+ buffers/cache:       2772      13025
> > Swap:         8103          0       8103
> 
> He may not have enough to do that tho.  Some folks only have 4Gbs or 
> less still.  That won't be enough for LOo.  Heck, my 16Gbs wasn't enough 
> at one time.  I had to either let it be on HDD or set it to a higher 
> amount than the default half.
> 
> I also tested the time difference once before, it didn't really make 
> much difference.  It just saves wear on a drive is all.
> 
> Dale

If 16GB of RAM wasn't enough, ydiw. I've used that line of 7G forever, and run
app-office/libreoffice, as well as firefox and some other big app (forget it's
name) and _never_ had a problem.
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.                                                                                                                                                          
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?                                                                                                                                                                                        
A: Top-posting.                                                                                                                                                                                                                
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

Bruce Hill wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 08:34:27PM -0500, Dale wrote:
>>> Stop using disk and build in RAM:
>>>
>>> tmpfs           /var/tmp/portage        tmpfs           size=7000M,nr_inodes=1M                 0 0
>>> tmpfs           /dev/shm                tmpfs           nodev,nosuid,noexec     0 0
>>>
>>> workstation ~ # free -m
>>>                total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
>>> Mem:         15798       3711      12087          0          0        937
>>> -/+ buffers/cache:       2772      13025
>>> Swap:         8103          0       8103
>> He may not have enough to do that tho.  Some folks only have 4Gbs or
>> less still.  That won't be enough for LOo.  Heck, my 16Gbs wasn't enough
>> at one time.  I had to either let it be on HDD or set it to a higher
>> amount than the default half.
>>
>> I also tested the time difference once before, it didn't really make
>> much difference.  It just saves wear on a drive is all.
>>
>> Dale
> If 16GB of RAM wasn't enough, ydiw. I've used that line of 7G forever, and run
> app-office/libreoffice, as well as firefox and some other big app (forget it's
> name) and _never_ had a problem.

Well, a while back, OOo and LOo wanted more than 8Gbs.  It wasn't my 
need but what portage looked for.  Then someone did some changes and 
reduced that need and it worked.  From my understanding, there was some 
code clean up that helped in that.  I think it looks for 6Gbs now.  From 
the ebuild:

CHECKREQS_MEMORY="512M"
CHECKREQS_DISK_BUILD="6G"

It used to be more than that.  If it didn't have enough, it stopped.  
Even when I would override that setting, it would still run out of space 
more often than not.  As a matter of fact, I still have the command in 
my freq used commands file that I used to fix it:

mount -t tmpfs -o size=12g tmpfs /var/tmp/portage

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Mick]

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On Saturday 20 Jul 2013 06:12:40 Dale wrote:
> Bruce Hill wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 08:34:27PM -0500, Dale wrote:
> >>> Stop using disk and build in RAM:
> >>> 
> >>> tmpfs           /var/tmp/portage        tmpfs          
> >>> size=7000M,nr_inodes=1M                 0 0 tmpfs           /dev/shm  
> >>>              tmpfs           nodev,nosuid,noexec     0 0
> >>> 
> >>> workstation ~ # free -m
> >>> 
> >>>                total       used       free     shared    buffers    
> >>>                cached
> >>> 
> >>> Mem:         15798       3711      12087          0          0       
> >>> 937 -/+ buffers/cache:       2772      13025
> >>> Swap:         8103          0       8103
> >> 
> >> He may not have enough to do that tho.  Some folks only have 4Gbs or
> >> less still.  That won't be enough for LOo.  Heck, my 16Gbs wasn't enough
> >> at one time.  I had to either let it be on HDD or set it to a higher
> >> amount than the default half.
> >> 
> >> I also tested the time difference once before, it didn't really make
> >> much difference.  It just saves wear on a drive is all.
> >> 
> >> Dale
> > 
> > If 16GB of RAM wasn't enough, ydiw. I've used that line of 7G forever,
> > and run app-office/libreoffice, as well as firefox and some other big
> > app (forget it's name) and _never_ had a problem.
> 
> Well, a while back, OOo and LOo wanted more than 8Gbs.  It wasn't my
> need but what portage looked for.  Then someone did some changes and
> reduced that need and it worked.  From my understanding, there was some
> code clean up that helped in that.  I think it looks for 6Gbs now.  From
> the ebuild:
> 
> CHECKREQS_MEMORY="512M"
> CHECKREQS_DISK_BUILD="6G"
> 
> It used to be more than that.  If it didn't have enough, it stopped.
> Even when I would override that setting, it would still run out of space
> more often than not.  As a matter of fact, I still have the command in
> my freq used commands file that I used to fix it:
> 
> mount -t tmpfs -o size=12g tmpfs /var/tmp/portage

Does it stop dead or does it start to page into swap?

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

Mick wrote:
> On Saturday 20 Jul 2013 06:12:40 Dale wrote:
>> Bruce Hill wrote:
>>>
>>> If 16GB of RAM wasn't enough, ydiw. I've used that line of 7G forever,
>>> and run app-office/libreoffice, as well as firefox and some other big
>>> app (forget it's name) and _never_ had a problem.
>> Well, a while back, OOo and LOo wanted more than 8Gbs.  It wasn't my
>> need but what portage looked for.  Then someone did some changes and
>> reduced that need and it worked.  From my understanding, there was some
>> code clean up that helped in that.  I think it looks for 6Gbs now.  From
>> the ebuild:
>>
>> CHECKREQS_MEMORY="512M"
>> CHECKREQS_DISK_BUILD="6G"
>>
>> It used to be more than that.  If it didn't have enough, it stopped.
>> Even when I would override that setting, it would still run out of space
>> more often than not.  As a matter of fact, I still have the command in
>> my freq used commands file that I used to fix it:
>>
>> mount -t tmpfs -o size=12g tmpfs /var/tmp/portage
> Does it stop dead or does it start to page into swap?
>

Actually, portage looks for enough space before even starting and still 
does.  However, when I force it to ignore it, it stops and says it ran 
out of space.  I'd just rather it didn't use swap anyway.  Either way, 
OOo and LOo used to need lots of space.  I think there was some code 
cleanup and maybe some other changes that reduced that a lot.  I think 
there was also some gcc changes to but not sure on that.

I did some more searching after my last post, at one point it looked for 
at least 12GBs from what I found.  That was the largest setting I found.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Mick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: Text/Plain, Size: 1905 bytes --]

On Sunday 21 Jul 2013 10:40:11 Dale wrote:
> Mick wrote:
> > On Saturday 20 Jul 2013 06:12:40 Dale wrote:
> >> Bruce Hill wrote:
> >>> If 16GB of RAM wasn't enough, ydiw. I've used that line of 7G forever,
> >>> and run app-office/libreoffice, as well as firefox and some other big
> >>> app (forget it's name) and _never_ had a problem.
> >> 
> >> Well, a while back, OOo and LOo wanted more than 8Gbs.  It wasn't my
> >> need but what portage looked for.  Then someone did some changes and
> >> reduced that need and it worked.  From my understanding, there was some
> >> code clean up that helped in that.  I think it looks for 6Gbs now.  From
> >> the ebuild:
> >> 
> >> CHECKREQS_MEMORY="512M"
> >> CHECKREQS_DISK_BUILD="6G"
> >> 
> >> It used to be more than that.  If it didn't have enough, it stopped.
> >> Even when I would override that setting, it would still run out of space
> >> more often than not.  As a matter of fact, I still have the command in
> >> my freq used commands file that I used to fix it:
> >> 
> >> mount -t tmpfs -o size=12g tmpfs /var/tmp/portage
> > 
> > Does it stop dead or does it start to page into swap?
> 
> Actually, portage looks for enough space before even starting and still
> does.  However, when I force it to ignore it, it stops and says it ran
> out of space.  I'd just rather it didn't use swap anyway.  Either way,
> OOo and LOo used to need lots of space.  I think there was some code
> cleanup and maybe some other changes that reduced that a lot.  I think
> there was also some gcc changes to but not sure on that.
> 
> I did some more searching after my last post, at one point it looked for
> at least 12GBs from what I found.  That was the largest setting I found.

Right, so running /var/tmp/portage on a tmpfs definitely won't work on an old 
box of mine with only a few MB of memory.

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

Mick wrote:
> On Sunday 21 Jul 2013 10:40:11 Dale wrote:
>
>> Actually, portage looks for enough space before even starting and still
>> does.  However, when I force it to ignore it, it stops and says it ran
>> out of space.  I'd just rather it didn't use swap anyway.  Either way,
>> OOo and LOo used to need lots of space.  I think there was some code
>> cleanup and maybe some other changes that reduced that a lot.  I think
>> there was also some gcc changes to but not sure on that.
>>
>> I did some more searching after my last post, at one point it looked for
>> at least 12GBs from what I found.  That was the largest setting I found.
> Right, so running /var/tmp/portage on a tmpfs definitely won't work on an old
> box of mine with only a few MB of memory.
>

Not likely.  It may for some smaller packages but not for the large ones 
for sure.

When I first built this rig, I only had 8GBs of ram and I could only use 
it when all the packages to update were smaller ones. Generally, I just 
left it on a HDD.

The biggest issue that I run into still, failed emerges are left on 
there and take up space that the next packages may need.  Thing is, they 
have to be there to see what caused it to fail.  Of course, the same 
thing can happen when on a HDD as well.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1402 bytes --]

On Sun, 21 Jul 2013 10:57:24 +0100, Mick wrote:

> > Actually, portage looks for enough space before even starting and
> > still does.  However, when I force it to ignore it, it stops and says
> > it ran out of space.  I'd just rather it didn't use swap anyway.
> > Either way, OOo and LOo used to need lots of space.  I think there
> > was some code cleanup and maybe some other changes that reduced that
> > a lot.  I think there was also some gcc changes to but not sure on
> > that.
> > 
> > I did some more searching after my last post, at one point it looked
> > for at least 12GBs from what I found.  That was the largest setting I
> > found.  
> 
> Right, so running /var/tmp/portage on a tmpfs definitely won't work on
> an old box of mine with only a few MB of memory.

It will, because it starts to use swap, but then there's no benefit to
using tmpfs in the first place. What I used to do on my netbook was run
tmpfs for /tmp and have PORTAGE_TMPDIR use that by default but set
specific packages to use a different, on disk, location

% cat /etc/portage/package.env/libreoffice
app-office/libreoffice disk-tmpdir.conf

]% cat /etc/portage/env/disk-tmpdir.conf
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/mnt/scratch"

where /mnt/scratch is a directory I use for all sorts of non-permanent
files.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

The truth shall make you free, but first it shall piss you off.

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[pk]

On 2013-07-20 01:23, luis jure wrote:

> hehe... i guess neil meant that in average for each Tb you have in your
> disk, only 125Mb is really important or useful. the rest is crap that just
> piles up...
> 

No, 1Tb = 125GB (note the difference between Tb = Tbit and TB=TByte)...

Best regards

Peter K

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[luis jure]

on 2013-07-20 at 09:42 pk wrote:

> On 2013-07-20 01:23, luis jure wrote:
> 
> > hehe... i guess neil meant that in average for each Tb you have in your
> > disk, only 125Mb is really important or useful. the rest is crap that
> > just piles up...
> > 
> 
> No, 1Tb = 125GB (note the difference between Tb = Tbit and TB=TByte)...

haha, yes, someone else mentioned that already. silly me, i didn't pay
attention to the lowercase b... i really thought neil was saying that in
jest! anyway, i think there is something in the idea that for each TB in
their hard disks, the average home user has lots of useless crap. i know
*i* do...

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[pk]

On 2013-07-20 13:59, luis jure wrote:

>the average home user has lots of useless crap. i know
> *i* do...

Yes, I do too... So the answer is smaller disks in order not to
accumulate so much crap! ;-)

Best regards

Peter K

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

pk wrote:
> On 2013-07-20 13:59, luis jure wrote:
>
>> the average home user has lots of useless crap. i know
>> *i* do...
> Yes, I do too... So the answer is smaller disks in order not to
> accumulate so much crap! ;-)
>
> Best regards
>
> Peter K
>
>

I have to say, most of mine is useful stuff.  I have smaller files that 
show the wiring for my car speaker system.  I have documents that I sent 
to Social Security and State offices concerning my disability.  I also 
have some financial info, encrypted of course, stored here.  My smaller 
stuff is important to keep.  My larger stuff is videos and camera pics.  
Just as examples:

9.4G    /home/dale/Desktop/Music
1.1T    /home/dale/Desktop/Videos
16G     /home/dale/Desktop/Documents/Camera-pics
5.2G    /home/dale/Desktop/Documents/Kathie-camera
4.4G    /home/dale/Desktop/Documents/Recipes

That's just a example.  You may notice, videos is by far the largest 
thing I have tho.  It takes up a LOT of space.

I may could clean up some of that stuff a bit but it wouldn't be much.  
I generally store stuff in a temp location until I know if I need it 
long term.  Stuff like exploded views of my washing machine.  When I 
know it is the right one for my washing machine, I move it to a 
permanent location.  If it turns out to be the wrong one or I can't fix 
the appliance, I chunk the appliance and then trash the files too.  I 
also keep the last two versions of sysrescue for my USB stick.  That 
reminds me, I need to test the latest one to make sure it works, when I 
reboot again.  :/

Yea, I'm one weird cookie.  lol

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 20 Jul 2013 15:02:48 -0500, Dale wrote:

> I 
> also keep the last two versions of sysrescue for my USB stick.

How do you copy one to a stick when you need to rescue an unbootable
system? I prefer to keep the ISO in /boot, no need for a USB stick then.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Bruce Hill]

On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 10:43:39PM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> 
> How do you copy one to a stick when you need to rescue an unbootable
> system? I prefer to keep the ISO in /boot, no need for a USB stick then.

Would you mind a short HOW-TO for that, including {lilo,grub}.conf?

And would this only be applicable to those poor souls who don't keep a known,
good kernel in /boot Just In Case (TM)?
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.                                                                                                                                                          
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?                                                                                                                                                                                        
A: Top-posting.                                                                                                                                                                                                                
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 945 bytes --]

On Sat, 20 Jul 2013 17:00:21 -0500, Bruce Hill wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 10:43:39PM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > 
> > How do you copy one to a stick when you need to rescue an unbootable
> > system? I prefer to keep the ISO in /boot, no need for a USB stick
> > then.
> 
> Would you mind a short HOW-TO for that, including {lilo,grub}.conf?

http://www.sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-manual-en_Easy_install_SystemRescueCd_on_harddisk#Boot_the_ISO_image_from_the_disk_using_Grub2

> And would this only be applicable to those poor souls who don't keep a
> known, good kernel in /boot Just In Case (TM)?

A known, good kernel is not much help if your root filesystem is damaged,
although I do make sure I always have at least one such kernel in /boot.

One of the benefits of booting sysrescd this way is that it is a *lot*
faster than USB.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Windows Error #56: Operator fell asleep while waiting.

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Bruce Hill]

On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 11:20:30PM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > 
> > Would you mind a short HOW-TO for that, including {lilo,grub}.conf?
> 
> http://www.sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-manual-en_Easy_install_SystemRescueCd_on_harddisk#Boot_the_ISO_image_from_the_disk_using_Grub2
> 
> > And would this only be applicable to those poor souls who don't keep a
> > known, good kernel in /boot Just In Case (TM)?
> 
> A known, good kernel is not much help if your root filesystem is damaged,
> although I do make sure I always have at least one such kernel in /boot.
> 
> One of the benefits of booting sysrescd this way is that it is a *lot*
> faster than USB.

Thanks. I assume you must have a separate /boot partition in case "your root
filesystem is damaged" or this still doesn't help, eh?
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.                                                                                                                                                          
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?                                                                                                                                                                                        
A: Top-posting.                                                                                                                                                                                                                
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 489 bytes --]

On Sat, 20 Jul 2013 17:38:59 -0500, Bruce Hill wrote:

> > A known, good kernel is not much help if your root filesystem is
> > damaged, although I do make sure I always have at least one such
> > kernel in /boot.

> Thanks. I assume you must have a separate /boot partition in case "your
> root filesystem is damaged" or this still doesn't help, eh?

Yes, and it's mounted ro to minimise the risk of such damage.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Top Oxymorons Number 15: Extinct Life

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[William Kenworthy]

On 21/07/13 06:42, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Jul 2013 17:38:59 -0500, Bruce Hill wrote:
> 
>>> A known, good kernel is not much help if your root filesystem is
>>> damaged, although I do make sure I always have at least one such
>>> kernel in /boot.
> 
>> Thanks. I assume you must have a separate /boot partition in case "your
>> root filesystem is damaged" or this still doesn't help, eh?
> 
> Yes, and it's mounted ro to minimise the risk of such damage.
> 
> 

I used to do this (keeping a rescue partitio) ... but found it was
useful only some of the time.  Nowadays I just leave a sysrescuecd USB
key on top of the case :)  Same features, useful in more circumstances,
less maintenance overhead.

BillK

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 663 bytes --]

On Sun, 21 Jul 2013 07:02:35 +0800, William Kenworthy wrote:

> > Yes, and it's mounted ro to minimise the risk of such damage.

> I used to do this (keeping a rescue partitio) ... but found it was
> useful only some of the time.  Nowadays I just leave a sysrescuecd USB
> key on top of the case :)  Same features, useful in more circumstances,
> less maintenance overhead.

This sin't a rescue partition, it's just a GRUB menu entry and a copy f
the ISO in /boot, so far less maintenance even than making sure a USB
stick stays put. Plus it is much faster to boot.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Irritable? Who the bloody hell are you calling irritable?

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Peter Humphrey]

On Sunday 21 Jul 2013 00:45:55 Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Jul 2013 07:02:35 +0800, William Kenworthy wrote:
> > > Yes, and it's mounted ro to minimise the risk of such damage.
> > 
> > I used to do this (keeping a rescue partitio) ... but found it was
> > useful only some of the time.  Nowadays I just leave a sysrescuecd USB
> > key on top of the case :)  Same features, useful in more circumstances,
> > less maintenance overhead.
> 
> This sin't a rescue partition, it's just a GRUB menu entry and a copy f
> the ISO in /boot, so far less maintenance even than making sure a USB
> stick stays put. Plus it is much faster to boot.

An interesting idea you present, Neil. So far I've been maintaining a small 
rescue system. My /boot is only 100MB so if I wanted to follow your idea I'd 
have to move and resize everything else on this MBR setup. I have twin 
spinning disks with two LVM sets in logical partitions, so I assume I'd have 
to destroy those and re-create them. What a lot of work!

Oh, or I could sacrifice (part of) a swap partition to expand /boot into.

-- 
Regards,
Peter

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 970 bytes --]

On Sun, 21 Jul 2013 10:14:22 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote:

> > This sin't a rescue partition, it's just a GRUB menu entry and a copy
> > f the ISO in /boot, so far less maintenance even than making sure a
> > USB stick stays put. Plus it is much faster to boot.  
> 
> An interesting idea you present, Neil. So far I've been maintaining a
> small rescue system. My /boot is only 100MB so if I wanted to follow
> your idea I'd have to move and resize everything else on this MBR
> setup. I have twin spinning disks with two LVM sets in logical
> partitions, so I assume I'd have to destroy those and re-create them.
> What a lot of work!

Yes, probably too much.

> Oh, or I could sacrifice (part of) a swap partition to expand /boot
> into.

That would be easier, you could always add more swap from an LV, unless
you use it for suspend.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

the sum of all human intelligence is constant, only the number of humans
increases.

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Peter Humphrey]

On Sunday 21 Jul 2013 10:21:45 Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Jul 2013 10:14:22 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > What a lot of work!
> 
> Yes, probably too much.
> 
> > Oh, or I could sacrifice (part of) a swap partition to expand /boot
> > into.
> 
> That would be easier, you could always add more swap from an LV, unless
> you use it for suspend.

I have more swap than I need, arranged thus:

$ grep swap /etc/fstab
/dev/sda3           none                swap    sw,pri=10              0 0
/dev/sdb3           none                swap    sw,pri=10              0 0
/dev/sda7           none                swap    sw,pri=1                0 0
/dev/sdb7           none                swap    sw,pri=1                0 0

...in which sdX3 is 2GB (not GBs, Dale - time doesn't come into it  ;-) ) and 
sdX7 is 10GB. Thus the big swap areas are only used when necessary to compile 
LO, Firefox and pals. I could easily halve sda3 and still have plenty of swap.

No, I don't suspend this box because it's permanently active running four 
BOINC jobs at a time.

-- 
Regards,
Peter

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 21.07.2013 01:45, schrieb Neil Bothwick:

> This sin't a rescue partition, it's just a GRUB menu entry and a
> copy f the ISO in /boot, so far less maintenance even than making
> sure a USB stick stays put. Plus it is much faster to boot.

Yep, I got that set up as well when I did my GRUB2-learning-steps ;-)

nice to have, sure!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[J. Roeleveld]

On Sun, July 21, 2013 01:45, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Jul 2013 07:02:35 +0800, William Kenworthy wrote:
>
>> > Yes, and it's mounted ro to minimise the risk of such damage.
>
>> I used to do this (keeping a rescue partitio) ... but found it was
>> useful only some of the time.  Nowadays I just leave a sysrescuecd USB
>> key on top of the case :)  Same features, useful in more circumstances,
>> less maintenance overhead.
>
> This sin't a rescue partition, it's just a GRUB menu entry and a copy f
> the ISO in /boot, so far less maintenance even than making sure a USB
> stick stays put. Plus it is much faster to boot.

It's a nice idea, but the boot-time of the rescue-partition doesn't really
matter to me. It's more important that it boots a recent version.
On a desktop it would be useful, but as I have more then 1 machine,
creating the USB stick is just as easy :)

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1239 bytes --]

On Tue, 23 Jul 2013 09:41:58 +0200, J. Roeleveld wrote:

> > This isn't a rescue partition, it's just a GRUB menu entry and a copy
    ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
> > f the ISO in /boot, so far less maintenance even than making sure a
> > USB stick stays put. Plus it is much faster to boot.  
> 
> It's a nice idea, but the boot-time of the rescue-partition doesn't
                                             ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
> really matter to me. It's more important that it boots a recent version.
> On a desktop it would be useful, but as I have more then 1 machine,
> creating the USB stick is just as easy :)

I agree that creating a sysrescd USB stick from the ISO is easy with the
provided script, almost as easy as scping the file to a few machines.
About the only thing easier is losing the USB stick hen I need it, which
is probably the main reason I do it this way.

I believe it's also possible to do this with PXE, meanng you don't even
need multiple copies of the file... unless your PXE server needs rescuing.

I always have it on a USB stick too, but that's for fixing other people's
computers :)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Idaho - It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from there.

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Jul 2013 15:02:48 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>> I
>> also keep the last two versions of sysrescue for my USB stick.
> How do you copy one to a stick when you need to rescue an unbootable
> system? I prefer to keep the ISO in /boot, no need for a USB stick then.
>
>

It's hard to put it in /boot when /boot doesn't have the space.  I need 
to redo some stuff and make /boot larger.  I'm not looking forward to 
that either.

By the way, I do update the stick every once in a while and just keep 
the ISO in case I need to redo the USB stick for some reason. Sometimes 
I use the stick for something else and have to put the ISO back.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Paul Hartman]

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 6:03 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 19 Jul 2013 11:43:39 -0500, Dale wrote:
>>
>>> My /home is over 1Tb, that is Tb too. I'm not buying
>>> one big enough for all that.
>>
>> 1Tb is only 125GB, well within the capacity of current SSDs :P
>>
>> Switching to an SSD, particularly on a laptop where you can't add a
>> second drive, really helps you decide how much of the content of ~ you
>> really need.
>>
>>
>
> Mine is mostly videos and some smaller amount of pics.  1 Tb is 125Gb?  1Tb
> is 1,000Gb or so.  I would also be concerned about the cost of one that
> large too.
>
> Confused.

Watch out for the "b" vs "B"... bits-vs-bytes :)

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 6:03 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>>> On Fri, 19 Jul 2013 11:43:39 -0500, Dale wrote:
>>>
>>>> My /home is over 1Tb, that is Tb too. I'm not buying
>>>> one big enough for all that.
>>> 1Tb is only 125GB, well within the capacity of current SSDs :P
>>>
>>> Switching to an SSD, particularly on a laptop where you can't add a
>>> second drive, really helps you decide how much of the content of ~ you
>>> really need.
>>>
>>>
>> Mine is mostly videos and some smaller amount of pics.  1 Tb is 125Gb?  1Tb
>> is 1,000Gb or so.  I would also be concerned about the cost of one that
>> large too.
>>
>> Confused.
> Watch out for the "b" vs "B"... bits-vs-bytes :)
>
>

I always use the same as what is specified on the drive itself to 
prevent just that sort of confusion.  I also go by the human readable 
output of df as well.  Sometimes du if needed.

Changing the case of the b around is not going to change what space my 
data consumes or what a drive can hold.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 19 Jul 2013 19:50:47 -0500, Dale wrote:

> Changing the case of the b around is not going to change what space my 
> data consumes or what a drive can hold.

No, but it does change the meaning of what you are saying it uses, and
invalidates your sig in the process :)

Remember *nix is case-sensitive :)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

"Mmmm, trouble with grammer have I, yes?" - Yoda

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Stroller]

On 20 July 2013, at 00:03, Dale wrote:
> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>> On Fri, 19 Jul 2013 11:43:39 -0500, Dale wrote:
>> 
>>> My /home is over 1Tb, that is Tb too. I'm not buying
>>> one big enough for all that.
>> 
>> 1Tb is only 125GB, well within the capacity of current SSDs :P
>> ...
> 
> Mine is mostly videos and some smaller amount of pics.  1 Tb is 125Gb?  1Tb is 1,000Gb or so.  I would also be concerned about the cost of one that large too.


I wouldn't have bothered making this distinction, but I think:

1TB = 1000GB
1Tb = 125GB

HTH,

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Randy Barlow]

Stroller wrote:
> I wouldn't have bothered making this distinction, but I think:
>
> 1TB = 1000GB
> 1Tb = 125GB

There are also TiBs[0]:

1 TiB = 1024 GiB

Similarly, there are MiB, etc.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tebibyte

-- 
R

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Alan McKinnon]

On 20/07/2013 01:03, Dale wrote:
> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>> On Fri, 19 Jul 2013 11:43:39 -0500, Dale wrote:
>>
>>> My /home is over 1Tb, that is Tb too. I'm not buying
>>> one big enough for all that.
>> 1Tb is only 125GB, well within the capacity of current SSDs :P
>>
>> Switching to an SSD, particularly on a laptop where you can't add a
>> second drive, really helps you decide how much of the content of ~ you
>> really need.
>>
>>
> 
> Mine is mostly videos and some smaller amount of pics.  1 Tb is 125Gb? 
> 1Tb is 1,000Gb or so.  I would also be concerned about the cost of one
> that large too.
> 
> Confused.


Neil is jerking your chain :-)

Remember, he's an Englishman and they don't do slapstick humour, they do
clever and subtle humour.

You typed "b" when you intended to type "B"


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Peter Humphrey]

On Saturday 20 Jul 2013 12:26:04 Alan McKinnon wrote:

> Neil is jerking your chain :-)
> 
> Remember, he's an Englishman and they don't do slapstick humour, they do
> clever and subtle humour.

I'm another, and I've been tempted to make the same observation as Neil did, 
but I wouldn't have been so funny so I'm glad I left it to him :-)

-- 
Regards,
Peter

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Saturday 20 Jul 2013 12:26:04 Alan McKinnon wrote:
>
>> Neil is jerking your chain :-)
>>
>> Remember, he's an Englishman and they don't do slapstick humour, they do
>> clever and subtle humour.
> I'm another, and I've been tempted to make the same observation as Neil did,
> but I wouldn't have been so funny so I'm glad I left it to him :-)
>

And I thought I was typing a large B instead of a little b.  I'm not 
used to having two capitol letters next to each other I guess. Either 
way, I had a little b next to the drive sizes too.  lol

Neil, you know how payback is right?  ROFL

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 20 Jul 2013 14:50:29 -0500, Dale wrote:

> Neil, you know how payback is right?  ROFL

That's the one with Mel Gibson?


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Top Oxymorons Number 35: Legally drunk

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Jul 2013 14:50:29 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>> Neil, you know how payback is right?  ROFL
> That's the one with Mel Gibson?
>
>

It starts with a B.  Ironic huh?

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 21 Jul 2013 04:50:42 -0500, Dale wrote:

> > That's the one with Mel Gibson?
> >
> >  
> 
> It starts with a B.  Ironic huh?

Actually, his surname appears to mean "son of a GibiBit" ;-)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Hm..what's this red button fo|'»\x7f.'NO CARRIER

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 20 Jul 2013 12:26:04 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> Remember, he's an Englishman and they don't do slapstick humour, they do
> clever and subtle humour.

Have you never seen Monty Python or The Goodies?

PS, let me know when you think this is getting off-topic...


-- 
Neil Bothwick

If at first you don't succeed, well...darn.

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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[luis jure]

hi, i just booted my "new" system. migration using rsync was smooth. i had
to fight a little with grub2 and gpt, but now it seems everything is
working fine.

the system has been up just a few minutes, so i haven't had time to do
much. but i tried eix-sync and it seemed to me it went much faster. also
libreoffice opened in i think less than 2 seconds, instead of several
seconds like in my old HDD (a WD green, not particularly fast...).

so, all in all i'd venture that yes, the improvement is noticeable. 


on 2013-07-19 at 11:43 Dale wrote:

> At one time, I had a /data directory.  I stored large stuff there: 
> camera pics, videos, audio stuff and such.  If you put /home on SSD, you 
> could always put the larger stuff on another mount point.

yeah, that's the idea. for a moment i considered doing the opposite:
leaving my home in its current HDD, and mount the SSD partition under
/home for some special purposes. but i think the other way around is
a better idea.

best,


lj

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Bruce Hill]

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 07:00:59PM -0300, luis jure wrote:
> 
> the system has been up just a few minutes, so i haven't had time to do
> much. but i tried eix-sync and it seemed to me it went much faster. also
> libreoffice opened in i think less than 2 seconds, instead of several
> seconds like in my old HDD (a WD green, not particularly fast...).
> 
> so, all in all i'd venture that yes, the improvement is noticeable. 
> 
> lj


Do some meaningful benchmark...

emerge -ajv app-benchmarks/bonnie++ && bonnie++ -d /tmp -u root

then post us your output.

Cheers,
Bruce
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.                                                                                                                                                          
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?                                                                                                                                                                                        
A: Top-posting.                                                                                                                                                                                                                
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[luis jure]

on 2013-07-19 at 17:11 Bruce Hill wrote:

> Do some meaningful benchmark...
> 
> emerge -ajv app-benchmarks/bonnie++ && bonnie++ -d /tmp -u root
> 
> then post us your output.

mmm... /tmp is on the root partition that's only about 40 Gb (in my old
HDD / was 30Gb, and that was enough, but sometimes i had to clean a bit to
compile libreoffice, that checks for 6Gb free).

apparently that's not enough for bonnie++ to run, so i mounted the other
partition in the SSD and performed the benchmark there. 

here's the result :


Using uid:0, gid:0.
Writing a byte at a time...done
Writing intelligently...done
Rewriting...done
Reading a byte at a time...done
Reading intelligently...done
start 'em...done...done...done...done...done...
Create files in sequential order...done.
Stat files in sequential order...done.
Delete files in sequential order...done.
Create files in random order...done.
Stat files in random order...done.
Delete files in random order...done.
Version  1.97       ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input-
--Random- Concurrency   1     -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr-
--Block-- --Seeks-- Machine        Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP
K/sec %CP K/sec %CP  /sec %CP acme7        24016M   571  98 261698  22
133029  14  4272  99 287927  12  8057  53 Latency             23779us
78780us     591ms    2378us   51825us     892ms Version  1.97
------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
acme7               -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read---
-Delete-- files  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec
%CP 16 18593  19 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++
Latency              2033us     419us    1322us     109us       4us
33us
1.97,1.97,acme7,1,1374260412,24016M,,571,98,261698,22,133029,14,4272,99,287927,12,8057,53,16,,,,,18593,19,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,23779us,78780us,591ms,2378us,51825us,892ms,2033us,419us,1322us,109us,4us,33us


can you read that? i'm afraid i don't know much what those numbers mean in
terms of performance...

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Bruce Hill]

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 08:34:31PM -0300, luis jure wrote:
> on 2013-07-19 at 17:11 Bruce Hill wrote:
> 
> > Do some meaningful benchmark...
> > 
> > emerge -ajv app-benchmarks/bonnie++ && bonnie++ -d /tmp -u root
> > 
> > then post us your output.
> 
> mmm... /tmp is on the root partition that's only about 40 Gb (in my old
> HDD / was 30Gb, and that was enough, but sometimes i had to clean a bit to
> compile libreoffice, that checks for 6Gb free).
> 
> apparently that's not enough for bonnie++ to run, so i mounted the other
> partition in the SSD and performed the benchmark there. 
> 
> here's the result :
> 
> 
> Using uid:0, gid:0.
> Writing a byte at a time...done
> Writing intelligently...done
> Rewriting...done
> Reading a byte at a time...done
> Reading intelligently...done
> start 'em...done...done...done...done...done...
> Create files in sequential order...done.
> Stat files in sequential order...done.
> Delete files in sequential order...done.
> Create files in random order...done.
> Stat files in random order...done.
> Delete files in random order...done.
> Version  1.97       ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input-
> --Random- Concurrency   1     -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr-
> --Block-- --Seeks-- Machine        Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP
> K/sec %CP K/sec %CP  /sec %CP acme7        24016M   571  98 261698  22
> 133029  14  4272  99 287927  12  8057  53 Latency             23779us
> 78780us     591ms    2378us   51825us     892ms Version  1.97
> ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
> acme7               -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read---
> -Delete-- files  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec
> %CP 16 18593  19 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++
> Latency              2033us     419us    1322us     109us       4us
> 33us
> 1.97,1.97,acme7,1,1374260412,24016M,,571,98,261698,22,133029,14,4272,99,287927,12,8057,53,16,,,,,18593,19,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,23779us,78780us,591ms,2378us,51825us,892ms,2033us,419us,1322us,109us,4us,33us
> 
> 
> can you read that? i'm afraid i don't know much what those numbers mean in
> terms of performance...

Here's the definitive guide on how to understand it:

https://blogs.oracle.com/roch/entry/decoding_bonnie

Anyway, now you've got something to compare different disks on your hardware.

Cheers,
Bruce
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.                                                                                                                                                          
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?                                                                                                                                                                                        
A: Top-posting.                                                                                                                                                                                                                
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[William Kenworthy]

On 20/07/13 00:43, Dale wrote:
> luis jure wrote:
>> on 2013-07-19 at 01:56 Dale wrote:
>>
>>> Do you really want to put /home on a SSD?
>> well, not actually the whole /home, the SSD is too small for that. i'm
>> not
>> sure yet, i might keep /home on a HDD and mount the partition on the
>> SSD as
>> a directory under /home for some special uses. or the other way around...
>>
>>
> 
> 
> Size was one issue I thought of but I was more concerned with the wear
> and tear part but that was explained by others.  It seems that is not as
> much a issue any more.
> 
> At one time, I had a /data directory.  I stored large stuff there:
> camera pics, videos, audio stuff and such.  If you put /home on SSD, you
> could always put the larger stuff on another mount point.  One thing
> about Linux, you can mount stuff wherever you want.
> 
> Post back how it works out and any speed improvements you see.  I'm
> really curious since I would like to get one that is at least big enough
> for the OS itself.  My /home is over 1Tb, that is Tb too. I'm not buying
> one big enough for all that.  lol
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-)
> 

One "odd" condition I ran into twice with the ssd + btrfs were
filesystems about half full but cant write to because the filesystem was
full!

After messy crashes it seemed like btrfs would "lose" some
files/sectors/whatever and the only way I could recover was an erase
cycle (IBM 520 series).  It wasnt sub-volumes or other wrinkles as far
as I could see, just that btrfs/trim and the underlying disk didn't
agree and I couldn't figure out why ...

For "my" use case, having good backups (regularly tested by actually
needing to use them :) have been an integral part of my ssd
"experiences" :)  On the other side, the apple laptop with ssd + btrfs
on root has been problem free.

BillK

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration

[Bruce Hill]

On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 06:29:21AM +0800, William Kenworthy wrote:
> 
> One "odd" condition I ran into twice with the ssd + btrfs were
> filesystems about half full but cant write to because the filesystem was
> full!
> 
> After messy crashes it seemed like btrfs would "lose" some
> files/sectors/whatever and the only way I could recover was an erase
> cycle (IBM 520 series).  It wasnt sub-volumes or other wrinkles as far
> as I could see, just that btrfs/trim and the underlying disk didn't
> agree and I couldn't figure out why ...
> 
> For "my" use case, having good backups (regularly tested by actually
> needing to use them :) have been an integral part of my ssd
> "experiences" :)  On the other side, the apple laptop with ssd + btrfs
> on root has been problem free.
> 
> BillK

Everyone I know who uses BTRFS tells me they MUST keep backups, because of
such as that. It seems it's just not yet ready for prime time.

I used EXT4 in the past, and now XFS, and never had any data loss.

Just my 2c and experience.
-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
126 Fenco Drive                       ( \
Tupelo, MS 38801                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.                                                                                                                                                          
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?                                                                                                                                                                                        
A: Top-posting.                                                                                                                                                                                                                
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting

[gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration - caveat

[luis jure]

from my recent experience, a caveat if you're using GPT to partition your
disk and intend to boot from it: grub won't install on the disk (at least
if you have an old plain BIOS system, i understand this doesn't happen with
UEFI ??? ).

when i tried to run grub2-install i got this error message:

"this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition"

so i had to re-partition the disk and create a small partition at the
beginning without file system and with the bios_grub flag activated. 

after that grub installed OK, and i can boot from my GPT partitioned SSD.

i don't know if this can be of use to somebody.

best,


lj

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration - caveat

[William Kenworthy]

On 20/07/13 07:44, luis jure wrote:
> 
> 
> from my recent experience, a caveat if you're using GPT to partition your
> disk and intend to boot from it: grub won't install on the disk (at least
> if you have an old plain BIOS system, i understand this doesn't happen with
> UEFI ??? ).
> 
> when i tried to run grub2-install i got this error message:
> 
> "this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition"
> 
> so i had to re-partition the disk and create a small partition at the
> beginning without file system and with the bios_grub flag activated. 
> 
> after that grub installed OK, and i can boot from my GPT partitioned SSD.
> 
> i don't know if this can be of use to somebody.
> 
> best,
> 
> 
> lj
> 

You have to map the drive so grub can find it:

olympus ~ # cat /boot/grub/device.map
(hd0)   /dev/sda
olympus

Also, you can put the boot MBR on any disk - even an old spinner and
still have root on the ssd (as above, my ssd is actually /dev/sdd), but
the motherboard cant find any (non-usb) boot device unless I create a
device.map) - once grub is installed its fine and I think I could delete it.

BillK

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration - caveat

[luis jure]

on 2013-07-20 at 09:51 William Kenworthy wrote:

> You have to map the drive so grub can find it:

no, i don't think that's the problem.

the problem is that with GPT disks you need a BIOS Boot Partition since
they don't have a MBR. is that correct?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Install_to_GPT_BIOS_boot_partition
http://www.anchor.com.au/blog/2012/10/the-difference-between-booting-mbr-and-gpt-with-grub/

Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration - caveat

[Michael Hampicke]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 589 bytes --]

Am 20.07.2013 05:32, schrieb luis jure:
> on 2013-07-20 at 09:51 William Kenworthy wrote:
> 
>> You have to map the drive so grub can find it:
> 
> no, i don't think that's the problem.
> 
> the problem is that with GPT disks you need a BIOS Boot Partition since
> they don't have a MBR. is that correct?
> 
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Install_to_GPT_BIOS_boot_partition
> http://www.anchor.com.au/blog/2012/10/the-difference-between-booting-mbr-and-gpt-with-grub/
> 

Correct :-) If I remember correctly, stage2 of the grub bootloader will
be put there.


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Re: [gentoo-user] SSD partitioning and migration - caveat

[Thomas Mueller]

from luis jure <ljc@internet.com.uy>:

> on 2013-07-20 at 09:51 William Kenworthy wrote:
        
> You have to map the drive so grub can find it:
        
> no, i don't think that's the problem.
        
> the problem is that with GPT disks you need a BIOS Boot Partition since
> they don't have a MBR. is that correct?
 
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Install_to_GPT_BIOS_boot_partition
> http://www.anchor.com.au/blog/2012/10/the-difference-between-booting-mbr-and-gpt-with-grub/

I think to boot directly from a hard drive, you would need a BIOS Boot Partition or EFI System Partition, depending on whether the motherboard has legacy BIOS or UEFI.  I still boot from a USB stick or System Rescue CD with Syslinux or isolinux and the GRUB2 giant-floppy image (not intended to be written to any actual floppy disk).

I have also made FreeBSD and NetBSD installations on GPT-partitioned USB sticks without any GRUB, using a boot partition (FreeBSD) or installboot in the root partition (NetBSD), not sure how to do this with Linux.  But this only works when one OS is installed on the drive, quite OK for a USB stick in most cases.
        

Tom