Gentoo Forums
Gentoo Forums
Gentoo Forums
Quick Search: in
Killing flash media slowly via emerge --sync
View unanswered posts
View posts from last 24 hours

 
Reply to topic    Gentoo Forums Forum Index Gentoo Chat
View previous topic :: View next topic  

Portage on flash?
I don't have flash storage.
41%
 41%  [ 7 ]
No (expletive) way!
23%
 23%  [ 4 ]
Yes, but I try not to sync often
5%
 5%  [ 1 ]
Yes, no problems at all (yet).
29%
 29%  [ 5 ]
Total Votes : 17

Author Message
eccerr0r
Watchman
Watchman


Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Posts: 9645
Location: almost Mile High in the USA

PostPosted: Mon Sep 16, 2013 6:58 pm    Post subject: Killing flash media slowly via emerge --sync Reply with quote

On my eeePC I have a tiny 32G SSD which is on a miniPCIe card. To "save" write cycles (and space - 32G is not that much space) I kept portage on an 8GB SDHC card that I keep plugged into the card reader. I wonder when this SDHC card will start developing errors...

Note that the smaller the media, the less space to play with, the sooner it will wear out.

It looks like I've emerge --sync'ed around 200 times, probably all onto this poor SDHC card (format: ext2fs).

On a similar note, I do have Portage tree installed on my 128G and 180G "regular" SSDs, and knock on wood, no problems yet either.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
cwr
Veteran
Veteran


Joined: 17 Dec 2005
Posts: 1969

PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 1:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I emerged GCC 4.7 with the Gentoo on a 4G flash drive and the drive went read-only.
I don't know if it was coincidence or not, but I'm now using an NFS drive as the
root file system.

Will
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
eccerr0r
Watchman
Watchman


Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Posts: 9645
Location: almost Mile High in the USA

PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 3:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm up to 61 emerge --sync's on my 128GB Crucial M4 that I've complained about in the past for other issues (in OTW). No problems yet. I'm still at 4 erase cycles average on this laptop.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Gabriel_Blake
Guru
Guru


Joined: 16 Sep 2007
Posts: 362

PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 6:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

emerge --sync is just a bunch of small files - nothing to be worried about. I have 8GB of ram and use a 4GB tmpfs for /var/tmp (where the magic happens). Additionally I use a tmpfs for /var/log, /run and /tmp.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Administrator


Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54096
Location: 56N 3W

PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 7:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

eccerr0r,

Just for the portage tree, I would expect the SSD to outlive you :)

The killer can be /var/tmp/portage, which is the portage build space.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
nativemad
Developer
Developer


Joined: 30 Aug 2004
Posts: 918
Location: Switzerland

PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 7:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have portage (and distfiles) on an nfs share and only sync on that server.
I also use /var/tmp/portage on tmpfs wherever enough ram is available because it's usually much faster than a disk. Sometimes I even cheat and make the tmpfs larger than the actual ram and back it up via a swapfile, if it really, really needs to have more! :wink:
_________________
Power to the people!
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
eccerr0r
Watchman
Watchman


Joined: 01 Jul 2004
Posts: 9645
Location: almost Mile High in the USA

PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 9:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I am not so sure about that 8GB SDHC card, but yes I would think the regular SSDs should not have a problem. I tend to build in tmpfs when I can, so that helps. But firefox doesn't fit on the tmpfs so I am forced to use the SSD or some external storage.

I do wonder, however, since portage stores little small files here and there, how badly fragmented the on-chip representation will show up later as the SSD runs out of clean erase blocks. But since rsync only copies over changed files, I suppose the clean block burn rate is actually a lot slower than I thought, just that the freed storage blocks are now going to be scattered all over an erase block, and GC could take a while to collate the holes... but still, I'd think more people would vote "Yes, no problems yet" as I voted, and not as many "No F****** way" !!!

Anyway, I think my 32G SSD in my eeePC is way too small for how much storage I'm using on it, fortunately the burn rate is not too high. And I guess I don't care too much if that SDHC card dies, it was meant to be the sacrificial anode.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Gentoo Forums Forum Index Gentoo Chat All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum