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FizzyWidget
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 10:06 am    Post subject: SSD + Gentoo, a good idea? Reply with quote

Hi All

Reason I ask is that if I understand correctly SSD's only have a certain amount of read/writes before they decide to die, and seeing as putting gentoo onto such a device would require many reads/writes, I am wondering if I should go a head or just leave gentoo on the current drive its on now, and just dual boot from there.

Is there anyone here who is using gentoo on a SSD drive and can tell me if it is indeed worth it to move it, or just play safe?
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 11:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi FizzyWidget,
it's depend on your daily workload all the days long.

With gentoo compile stuff and daily consumer attitude I doubt there will any SSD write problems within next 10 years. :)

You can prevent writes to SSD by using more main memory, using zram for swap, using zram for tmpfs, squashfs for portage
and tracks S.M.A.R.T. values before SSD writes drying.

My two years old Samsung 830pro SSD has written 5TiB, reports Wear Leveling Count of 82 and says 97% of WLC are not used yet.
In viewpoint of SSD writes next 30 years will be safe. :)
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 2:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi

Lately just general day to day stuff, browse web, check email, watch movies, listen to tunes, looking at the manufacturers site they claim it should last 1,000,000 hours, although they dont really say what conditions that is under.

Probably me just going back to hearing stories of the first gen SSD's dying, I have a similar system on laptop which i could use to put gentoo onto the SSD so that would save a lot of read/writes and compile time
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 4:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SSD are fine. If you have enough RAM you can put /var/tmp/portage in a tmpfs and not have the temporary writes of compiling all the things.

Not that it would cause any problem really - the SSD can handle it and it's not like you recompile world every day.

Of course it will die. Sooner or later. That's true for HDD as well and for everything else.
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 4:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

frostschutz wrote:
SSD are fine. If you have enough RAM you can put /var/tmp/portage in a tmpfs and not have the temporary writes of compiling all the things.

Not that it would cause any problem really - the SSD can handle it and it's not like you recompile world every day.

Of course it will die. Sooner or later. That's true for HDD as well and for everything else.


+1 on the tmpfs :P
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 5:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

so i would just need to add

none /var/tmp/portage tmpfs size=2048M,noatime 0 0

to /etc/fstab? guess i will need to do this after i chroot on first install

i have 8G ram in the machine atm, and i know that libre office wants at least 6GB drive space when that builds, that and chromium will require more than 2GB, might make that on laptop and package it, as they are both corei7 machines.

My idea of using the clonezilla image i have of laptop wont work due to requiring logical partitions, so will need to do a full build on it anyway
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 9:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

FizzyWidget wrote:
so i would just need to add


You don't need to, really, not at all. I've done it simply because I don't know what else to do with all the RAM I have. :lol:

Looks like this for me:
Code:
none /var/tmp/portage tmpfs noatime,mode=0750,gid=portage,uid=portage 0 0


I didn't specify a size as 50% is the default IIRC which in my case is 8GB.

Note that with this set up, you won't be able to build some of the gigantic things such as openoffice probably... but most people use the -bin package there anyhow.
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 10:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

the last time i check portage i didnt see a bin version for libreoffice 4 - seems there is one there, so I guess thats one less thing to worry about. :)

Think after that its only chromium that space - maybe firefox and earlybird.

Only one way to see :D
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 12:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Putting /var/tmp/portage as tmpfs doesn't just cut down on writes, it makes compiling a LOT faster.

I'm a huge proponent of way too much RAM, and tmpfs anywhere you think it might help. Goes for a spinner or an ssd.

I generally have a spinner and an ssd now, the spinner gets swap files and the ssd gets the operating system.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 1:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I tried upping the memory to 16GB a while back, but the system just went mental - so far the laptop seems okay with 2GB - will prob change it for main system to what frostschutz posted below :)
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 2:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i wouldnt use it for a tmpfs.... i would use it to hold the binaries and keep it read only. id compile big lists of changes that need done and do them all in 1 swoop then re lock the drive.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 2:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would compile in RAM too. Discovered a guide to put firefox, libreoffice and chromium to not compile in RAM by default in the wiki.

Libreoffice-bin sucks hard for me, because of well known dependency issues.

I found info saying in the past compile in SSD was a problem, but today there's no problem anymore.

Good luck to you with your new SSD disk, I'll have mine, don't know when, but I'll! :-)
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 4:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have 16 gigs of ram on my box and I use this :

Code:

tmpfs          /var/tmp/portage tmpfs      size=12G                                    0 0
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 12:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Isn't 12gb a little overkill? After a successful emerge, will portage delete the files and the tmpfs shrink?
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 1:14 pm    Post subject: Re: SSD + Gentoo, a good idea? Reply with quote

FizzyWidget wrote:
Hi All

Reason I ask is that if I understand correctly SSD's only have a certain amount of read/writes before they decide to die, and seeing as putting gentoo onto such a device would require many reads/writes, I am wondering if I should go a head or just leave gentoo on the current drive its on now, and just dual boot from there.

Is there anyone here who is using gentoo on a SSD drive and can tell me if it is indeed worth it to move it, or just play safe?


Yes since quite a while.

LUKS / LVM on my 120 GB SSD. on ASUS g70sg notebook

IT works well. No idea on the trim stuff as my hole stuff is encrypted. it is luks / lvm / with some bigger data junks for the lvm / and ext4 file system.

I never bothered with trim. the box is quite responsive, which counts for myself. as for writing speed I personally think thats geek stuff. My box is quite fast. Much difference as with an ordinary harddisc.

I use Plextor, m3 sata 6gb/s 2.5" solid state drive, with 128 GB.

The few docs I need are saved on google drive and else I do not use many files anymore.

I mostly play enemy territory thats it, use google chrome.

Well * if you need that badly your data * you need regularly backups as any harddrive can fail * so far only one external drive which i borrowed to someone with another os as linux was so far destroyed * myself i just was lucky. Thats why i put the few files on google drive and thats it.

if you use tmpfs you propably need htis too:

Code:
localhost roman # cat /etc/portage/package.env
#according to https://wiki.gentoo.org/index.php?title=Portage_TMPDIR_on_tmpfs&redirect=no

app-office/libreoffice notmpfs.conf
mail-client/mozilla-thunderbird notmpfs.conf
www-client/chromium notmpfs.conf

dev-java/icedtea notmpfs.conf
sys-devel/gcc notmpfs.conf
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 6:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The main PC is backed up to a server pc, and to laptop, as well as external, so losing things isnt a concern, was just curious about Gentoo and SSD's, and best place to get said info is from people who are using Gentoo and SSD's :)

Thanks for the link, i did have it bookmarked, but cant remember if that was on laptop or main pc :oops:
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Marlo
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 7:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi,

If you're using tmpfs, then give the little helper scripts temerge a possibility.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 7:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

FizzyWidget wrote:
The main PC is backed up to a server pc, and to laptop, as well as external, so losing things isnt a concern, was just curious about Gentoo and SSD's, and best place to get said info is from people who are using Gentoo and SSD's :)

Thanks for the link, i did have it bookmarked, but cant remember if that was on laptop or main pc :oops:



My laptop has SSD and Gentoo on it since 2008. Still no issues (but yes, I have compile everything in tmpfs and use libreoffice-bin and firefox-bin which
do not fit into tmpfs)
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sweet, guess I am ready to take the plunge - wish me luck :D
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 11:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

hey

i love my gentoo on my ssd

i just followed this guide to save writes:

http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SSD

and put /var/log on a seperate hard drive together with my home-partitions


overall you can say that you can write 40GB of Data every day so your ssd would last for around 3 years. Read that anywhere some weeks ago
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 11:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for that link, quite informative, and I dont think I will be writing that much a day to the SSD, it will have /boot swap /root on it, /home will be on another drive :)
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 12:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

How would I do this on a fresh install, looking at the hand book it doesnt really give you many options other tan to - mount /dev/sdxX /mnt/gentoo

Is it possible to use the options once I have chrooted in ?
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 2:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you have another drive for /home, then put swap there too. You really don't want swap on an SSD. It's the worst thing that could happen IMO, especially if there's any chance at all that your box could actually use the swap.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 5:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just saw that the SSD article on the official wiki has been updated! http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SSD
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 04, 2014 12:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just my 2 cents: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7198720.html#7198720

It works, since Autumn 2012. Update: It still works in 2014. I habe kept tmp and var/tmp in RAM and can build Firefox, Thunderbird and Libreoffice without problems (just remount var/tmp as mentioned in that thread):
Code:
#!/bin/bash

#
# Libreoffice: 6600M
#
/bin/mount -o remount,size=6600M /var/tmp

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