Re: [gentoo-user] Finally got a SSD drive to put my OS on

[Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>]

Mark Knecht wrote:
> <SNIP>
> >
> >
> > Oh, please, don't go anywhere.  <begging>  We already lost the long
> term Alan.  BTW, I checked on him a while back.  He's still OK.  It's
> been a while tho.
> >
>
> Dale - I touched - truly. I'm happy to stick around but I no longer 
> run Gentoo and don't want to cause problems or piss off the 
> folks who need to be here. 
>
> > I read during a google search that some distros handle this sort of
> thing automatically, some sort of firmware thing or something.  I
> figured Gentoo didn't, it rarely does since that is the point of
> Gentoo.  So, no harm.  Heck, I just now applied power to the thing.  I
> don't even have it partitioned or anything yet.  Just rebooted after
> rearranging all the cables, adding power splitter etc etc.
>
> I don't know of any distros that do any of this in firmware. Maybe someone
> else can address that. Many distros now install fstrim by default and 
> update crontab. The Ubuntu family does, which I didn't know before this
> thread. However it is on both my Kubuntu machine and my Ubuntu
> Server machine.
>

I think what I read is that it is done automatically.  They could have
meant a cron job.  I don't think they said how, just that it is already
set up to do it.  Firmware was mentioned in the thread somewhere so I
thought maybe that was it.  Either way, fstrim is installed here.  It's
part of util-linux and that is pulled in by several packages.  I doubt
it will be going away here anytime soon given the long list of packages
that need it. Just to set up a cron job for it.  Remembering the steps
for that will take time tho.  o_O


> BTW - Windows does this in Disk Defragmenter but you have to 
> schedule it yourself according to Bard and ChatGPT. I'll be in 
> Windows later today to record some new music and plan to look into
> that then.
>
> Answering the question from below - weekly is what was set up by 
> default here. If your drive isn't near full and you're not writing a
> lot of new
> data on it each week then weekly would seem reasonable to me. 
> However being that you are running Gentoo and hence compiling
> lots and lots and lots of stuff every week it's possible that you 
> might _possibly_ want to run fstrim more often if your intermediate 
> files are going to this drive. 
>
>
> >
> > I do have one gripe.  Why can't drive makers pick a screw size and
> stick to it on ALL drives?  It took some digging to find a screw that
> would fit.  Some I bought that are supposed to work on SSDs were to
> short.  It would likely work on a metal adapter but not a thicker
> plastic one.  Luckily, I found 4 screws.  No clue where they came
> from.  Just in my junk box.  Before this week, never laid eyes on a
> SSD before.  Anyone know the thread size and count on those things?  I
> want to order a few, just in case.
>
> I second your gripe. I've purchased a couple of PC builder screw 
> sets from Amazon.
>  
> >
> > Is running fstrim once a week to often?  I update my OS once a week
> but given the amount of extra space, I'd think once a month would be
> often enough.  After all, it is 500GB and I'll likely only use less
> than half of that.  Most of the extra space will be extra boot options
> like Knoppix or something.  I'm just thinking it would give it a
> longer life.  Maybe my thinking is wrong???
> >
> > Now to play with this thing.  I got to remember what all has to be
> copied over so I can boot the new thing.  :/  Been ages since I moved
> a OS to another hard drive.  Maybe a reinstall would work better.  :-\
> >
>
> I think you have at least 3 options to play with the drive:
>
> 1) It's Gentoo so install from scratch. You'll feel great 
> if it works. It will only take you a day or two.
>
> 2) Possibly dd the old drive to the SSD. If the new 
> SSD boots as the same /dev/sdX device it should 
> work, maybe, maybe not.
>
> 3) If you have another SATA port then dual boot, 
> either with Gentoo on both or something simple 
> like Kubuntu. A base Kubuntu install takes about
> 15 minutes and will probably give you its own
> dual boot grub config. When you're sick of Kubuntu
> you can once again install Gentoo.
>
> Good luck no matter what path you take.
>
> Mark


I've thought of a few options myself.  I sort of have a OS copy/backup
already.  I currently do the compiling in a chroot on a separate drive. 
I then copy the compiled packages and use the -k option to update the
live OS.  I'll continue to do that when I start booting from the SSD. 
That should limit writes and such to the SSD.  I also got to rearrange
things so I can put swap on that spare drive I compile on.  I don't want
swap on a SSD.  I wish this thing would stop using swap completely.  I
have swappiness set to 1 already and it still uses swap.

Right now, I'm debating the size of /boot.  Knoppix is pretty large. 
The Gentoo LiveGUI thingy is too.  So, it will have to be larger than
the few hundred megabytes my current one is.  I'm thinking 10GBs or so. 
Maybe 12GBs to make sure I'm good to go for the foreseeable future. 
They may limit them to DVD size right now but one day they could pass
that limit by.  Software isn't getting smaller.  Besides, USB is the
thing now.

Lots of options.

Dale

:-)  :-)