On Thu, 5 Feb 2026, Matthias Kretz wrote:
> Patrick Palka [Wednesday, 4 February 2026 17:35:50 CET]:
> > avoid wearing down my SSD
>
> Tangent: I did that (wear down my SSD) via compiling (and deleting) too many
> tests.
>
> Nowadays I put all my build dirs into zstd-compressed btrfs on zram. This is
> my setup script:
>
> dir=/home/mkretz/.cache/zram
> use_btrfs=true
>
> if df --output=source $dir|tail -n1|grep -q /dev/zram; then
> #echo "$dir is a zram mount already. Nothing to do."
> exit
> fi
>
> fail() {
> echo "ERROR: $*" 1>&2
> exit 1
> }
>
> sudo modprobe zram
>
> if $use_btrfs; then
> dev=$(sudo zramctl -a 842 -s 20G -f) || fail "zram device creation
> failed"
> sudo mkfs.btrfs -m single $dev || fail "mkfs failed"
> sudo mkdir -p $dir
> sudo mount -o compress=zstd $dev $dir || fail "mounting failed"
> else
> dev=$(sudo zramctl -a zstd -s 60G -f) || fail "zram device creation
> failed"
> sudo mkfs.ext4 $dev || fail "mkfs failed"
> sudo mkdir -p $dir
> sudo mount $dev $dir || fail "mounting failed"
> fi
> sudo chown mkretz:mkretz $dir || fail "ownership change failed"
Thanks for this! Using zram also seems to really speed up loading
cc1plus into GDB which is very nice.
>
>
> --
> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> Dr. Matthias Kretz https://mattkretz.github.io
> GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research https://gsi.de
> std::simd
> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
>
