Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
james wrote: > On 3/17/20 10:14 AM, Rich Freeman wrote: >> On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 1:59 AM wrote: > >> Finally, ALL DRIVES FAIL. It doesn't matter what the underlying >> storage technology is. I've seen hard drives fail in less than a >> year, with the warranty replacement drive failing less than a year >> after that. I think next warranty replacement (still in the original >> warranty period) lasted 5+ years of near-continuous use. The typical >> failure modes of hard drives and solid state storage are different, >> but they all fail. You can't perfectly predict WHEN they will fail >> either. Most drives have SMART and sometimes it can detect failure >> conditions before failure, but not always. > > > Hello Rich, et al. > > I have deleted most, because I agree with the thread details, you get > what you pay for, but excess payment is rarely rewarded... > > > HEAT is the enemy of all electronics and mechanical things, computer > drives/memory are no exception. There are a myriad of interfaces/codes > on modern motherboards, and quite a few on legacy motherboards that > track heat. Some are not very accurate, but most, are reasonable. > > Hopefully, you kept your mobo book. A section somewhere talks about > temperature sensors. If the cpu is loaded, the drives are most likely > getting hot. If the fans are running on a relatively high speed, the > system is generating tons of heat. If the GPU(s) are running ho9t, the > drives are hot. tools that scan the hardware for sensors are great, > use them! > > > I now install 'water coolers' from thermaltake on all my chassis based > system. new or large video cards have tons of processing going on > inside the GPUs; thus a large source of heat. Systems with lots of > GPU cards, are like ovens. All of this heat, regardless of source, > KILLS all forms of memory, especially 'drives'. Keep everything > monitored, well vented and in a room, cool as possible. Many server > farm rooms run below 50 degrees F, to extend the performance and life > of electronics, particularly HDD and other forms of memory. Many > chipsets, scale down, upon increased heat, auto-magically. > > > Another (indirect) way to monitor heat, is to monitor the power > consumption of a component. (relatively) large power draw, is entwined > with heat production. Heat kills drives and memory no exceptions! > > > Here are few one-liners I use to monitor > (use/load==heat): > > watch -n12 sensors -f > > dstat -tcndylp --top-cpu 10 > > htop > > What would be great, is if folks just list what they use to monitor > the workload (and therefor heat indirectly) or the actual temperatures > of given chipsets and "smart drives"? Perhaps we can then cull the > responses and update of the gentoo help pages online with more > detailed examples, scripts and tools to better organize heat, current > and other relative performance parameters. > > > hth, > James > > I agree that heat is a huge problem. Run a CPU without a heat sink or with a poor one for a while and see how badly that ends. :/ That is why I build my own rigs. I have a Cooler Master HAF-932 case with those large 230MM fans. It has one on the front, one on the side and one on the top. They don't spin fast but they move a lot of air. The hard drives are mounted right behind the front fan which gives them good air flow. When I build, I never use the stock CPU cooler. I shop around and get a large cooler with a large fan. I ended up with the ZALMAN CNPS10X. At the time, it was among the top coolers. I've since replaced the 120MM fan. Using a IR sensor, which is pretty accurate, everything on my computer runs cool. Even my video card runs cool compared to some I've seen posted. My memory comes with coolers as well. They tend to run cool since that side fan blows air right on them but the heat sinks make them run even cooler. The other issue I've read about, start up. When things start up, like hard drives, they pull additional power, especially things like HDD motors. Those put stress on the motor itself plus the controllers that drive them. It also makes the power supply work harder trying to stabilize power which can cause spikes, sags etc. That's not good for the power supply or all the things connected to it. Although, a good power supply deals with that fairly well nowadays. Of course a poorly designed power supply doesn't. Of course, another killer, surges and bad power. We all know those can be bad, either immediately or as life shorteners when minor. Lightening strikes even far away can cause issues. We won't even go into those strikes that are close by and explode light bulbs and such. You know, those that even a surge protector has trouble stopping. I mostly use gkrellm to monitor my temps and such. The temps I get from IR sensors are pretty close to what I see with gkrellm. Since I've never had one, do SSDs get warm or hot? Or do they run cool bare? Curious because I got some options to mount one in
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
On 18/3/20 7:25 am, james wrote: > On 3/17/20 10:14 AM, Rich Freeman wrote: >> On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 1:59 AM wrote: > >> Finally, ALL DRIVES FAIL. It doesn't matter what the underlying >> storage technology is. I've seen hard drives fail in less than a I gave up trying to do fancy write minimization strategies for SSD's a long time ago as they usually had a performance penalty and I am using SSD's for their considerable speedup - I currently have about 5 SSD's and in addition you can add laptop nvme, m2.nvme etc to the list as well. I run normally - that is swap and compiling caches etc on the SSD. Over that last few years I have had one SSD fail (and 3-4 spinning rust!) - the SSD failure was a random event (it was a "good" intel one) as it just died out of the blue. It was being used as a bcache cacheing drive at the time, and one of the 4 HDD's in the system failed around the same time so I suspect and external event rather than internal to the SSD. The OS drives with swap and compiling have not caused any problems - one early generation 60GB spent its first 18months as a ceph node (really hammers the drive) and its still the main OS drive on my desktop. My comment is that these days, SSD's are not a concern or warrant special treatment and that an SSD failure is likely to be sudden and catastrophic unlike a normal HDD which usually degrades and gives warning signs of impending doom :) BillK
Re: [gentoo-user] os-prober fails sucessfully
On Tue, 17 Mar 2020 19:23:53 -0400,
Dutch Ingraham wrote:
>
> On 3/17/20 4:16 AM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > On Tue, 17 Mar 2020 03:00:59 -0500, Dutch Ingraham wrote:
> >
> >> Also from [1], with emphasis added "30_os-prober this script uses
> >> **os-prober to search for Linux** and other operating systems and places
> >> the results in the GRUB 2 menu.
> >>
> >> A review of the scripts 10_linux and 30_os-prober supplied by Gentoo
> >> with the grub and os-prober packages seems to confirm the Ubuntu
> >> documentation's accuracy.
> >>
> >> Regardless of which script is responsible, the problem remains that
> >> running 'grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg' under the circumstances
> >> outlined in my original post should find the other Linux operating
> >> systems, but doesn't.
> >
> > You're right, either things have changed since the days I used GRUB
> > extensively or I am losing it. No, that's not a multiple choice question!
>
> Well, you wouldn't be the first to begin losing it! I sent the original
> question before running things through strace, so (It wasn't
> particularly helpful.)
> >
> > Have you tried running the script with "sh -x" to see just what it is
> > doing?
>
> It calls a helper script and exits successfully.
>
> I wonder if it could be this part
> >
> > if ! command -v os-prober > /dev/null || ! command -v linux-boot-prober
> > >/dev/null ; then
> ># missing os-prober and/or linux-boot-prober
> >exit 0
> > fi
>
> Running `command -v os-prober' returns '/usr/bin/os-prober'
> >
> > If the os-prober command is missing the script will fail successfully, as
> > you experience. Is sys-boot/os-prober installed?
> >
> >
> Yes, it is installed as noted above, and, if I mount the partitions
> manually, os-prober will find them.
>
>
> I'm fairly certain I am missing one open and obvious thing, but can't
> see it. Here is a list of things I have tried, mainly for
> thread-completeness purposes:
>
> 1. Removed grub and op-prober packages then wiped all residual config files.
>
> 2. Reinstalled both, enabling the 'mount' use flag on grub.
>
> 3. Confirmed /usr/bin/os-prober and all /etc/grub.d/{scripts} are in
> place and executable.
>
> 4. Even though it is the default, added GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false to
> /etc/default/grub.
>
> 5. Even though it is the default, set GRUB_PLATFORMS="pc" in make.conf.
>
>
> On a fairly routine set-up (MBR/BIOS with four ext4 primary partitions)
> I should be able to just set the mount use flag on grub, install grub
> and os-prober, run 'grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg' and it should
> just detect all operating systems and write the config, right? RIGHT?
>
>
Are you sure its supposed to detect them even if they are not mounted?
How would they be able to look at the files? Where are the image
files on these partitions?
--
Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is:
How do
you spend it?
John Covici wb2una
cov...@ccs.covici.com
[gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.
On 2020-03-17, David Haller wrote: > And they produce and use their own controllers, so they additionally > know the ins and outs of those, i.e. they can easily optimize the > whole SSD from Flash-Chip over controller up to the firmware... Yep, that was definitely the gist of my (wishful) thinking when I decided on Samsung. > AFAIgathered, Samsung is the only one producing the whole product. > Albeit, I heard rumours, that the various divisions of Samsung could > as well be different manufacturers[1], I've worked with smaller corporations where various seemingly closely-related divisions might as well be on different planets. But at least there's chance that Samsung products can benefit from the vertical/horizontal integration. As it says on the coffee mug my neice gave me for christmas: Hold on, let me overthink this. -- Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
On 3/17/20 10:14 AM, Rich Freeman wrote: On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 1:59 AM wrote: Finally, ALL DRIVES FAIL. It doesn't matter what the underlying storage technology is. I've seen hard drives fail in less than a year, with the warranty replacement drive failing less than a year after that. I think next warranty replacement (still in the original warranty period) lasted 5+ years of near-continuous use. The typical failure modes of hard drives and solid state storage are different, but they all fail. You can't perfectly predict WHEN they will fail either. Most drives have SMART and sometimes it can detect failure conditions before failure, but not always. Hello Rich, et al. I have deleted most, because I agree with the thread details, you get what you pay for, but excess payment is rarely rewarded... HEAT is the enemy of all electronics and mechanical things, computer drives/memory are no exception. There are a myriad of interfaces/codes on modern motherboards, and quite a few on legacy motherboards that track heat. Some are not very accurate, but most, are reasonable. Hopefully, you kept your mobo book. A section somewhere talks about temperature sensors. If the cpu is loaded, the drives are most likely getting hot. If the fans are running on a relatively high speed, the system is generating tons of heat. If the GPU(s) are running ho9t, the drives are hot. tools that scan the hardware for sensors are great, use them! I now install 'water coolers' from thermaltake on all my chassis based system. new or large video cards have tons of processing going on inside the GPUs; thus a large source of heat. Systems with lots of GPU cards, are like ovens. All of this heat, regardless of source, KILLS all forms of memory, especially 'drives'. Keep everything monitored, well vented and in a room, cool as possible. Many server farm rooms run below 50 degrees F, to extend the performance and life of electronics, particularly HDD and other forms of memory. Many chipsets, scale down, upon increased heat, auto-magically. Another (indirect) way to monitor heat, is to monitor the power consumption of a component. (relatively) large power draw, is entwined with heat production. Heat kills drives and memory no exceptions! Here are few one-liners I use to monitor (use/load==heat): watch -n12 sensors -f dstat -tcndylp --top-cpu 10 htop What would be great, is if folks just list what they use to monitor the workload (and therefor heat indirectly) or the actual temperatures of given chipsets and "smart drives"? Perhaps we can then cull the responses and update of the gentoo help pages online with more detailed examples, scripts and tools to better organize heat, current and other relative performance parameters. hth, James
Re: [gentoo-user] os-prober fails sucessfully
On 3/17/20 4:16 AM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2020 03:00:59 -0500, Dutch Ingraham wrote:
Also from [1], with emphasis added "30_os-prober this script uses
**os-prober to search for Linux** and other operating systems and places
the results in the GRUB 2 menu.
A review of the scripts 10_linux and 30_os-prober supplied by Gentoo
with the grub and os-prober packages seems to confirm the Ubuntu
documentation's accuracy.
Regardless of which script is responsible, the problem remains that
running 'grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg' under the circumstances
outlined in my original post should find the other Linux operating
systems, but doesn't.
You're right, either things have changed since the days I used GRUB
extensively or I am losing it. No, that's not a multiple choice question!
Well, you wouldn't be the first to begin losing it! I sent the original
question before running things through strace, so (It wasn't
particularly helpful.)
Have you tried running the script with "sh -x" to see just what it is
doing?
It calls a helper script and exits successfully.
I wonder if it could be this part
if ! command -v os-prober > /dev/null || ! command -v linux-boot-prober
>/dev/null ; then
# missing os-prober and/or linux-boot-prober
exit 0
fi
Running `command -v os-prober' returns '/usr/bin/os-prober'
If the os-prober command is missing the script will fail successfully, as
you experience. Is sys-boot/os-prober installed?
Yes, it is installed as noted above, and, if I mount the partitions
manually, os-prober will find them.
I'm fairly certain I am missing one open and obvious thing, but can't
see it. Here is a list of things I have tried, mainly for
thread-completeness purposes:
1. Removed grub and op-prober packages then wiped all residual config files.
2. Reinstalled both, enabling the 'mount' use flag on grub.
3. Confirmed /usr/bin/os-prober and all /etc/grub.d/{scripts} are in
place and executable.
4. Even though it is the default, added GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false to
/etc/default/grub.
5. Even though it is the default, set GRUB_PLATFORMS="pc" in make.conf.
On a fairly routine set-up (MBR/BIOS with four ext4 primary partitions)
I should be able to just set the mount use flag on grub, install grub
and os-prober, run 'grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg' and it should
just detect all operating systems and write the config, right? RIGHT?
Re: [gentoo-user] apache htaccess - block IP range
On 03/17/2020 04:51 PM, Michael wrote: > Please do not top-post in this mailing list. > > On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 22:41:26 GMT the...@sys-concept.com wrote: >> I have tried (doesn't work) >> >> >> order allow,deny >> allow from all >> >> # block spamers: >> deny from huawei.com >> >> >> I'm still getting over 800-entires from: 114.119.128.0 - 114.119.191.255 > > I just noticed the address is not a /24 but a /18 address space! My mistake, > the correct IP notation therefore becomes: > > 114.119.128.0/18 > > Or; > > 114.119.128.0/255.255.192.0 > > Don't forget to reload the apache config, or restart the server. > > If changes to the .htaccess do not work, this may mean the hosting company is > overriding such directives with their configuration - you'll need to talk to > them. Yes, it worked the entries are dropping, from 800+ to 44 now Thank you!
Re: [gentoo-user] apache htaccess - block IP range
Please do not top-post in this mailing list. On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 22:41:26 GMT the...@sys-concept.com wrote: > I have tried (doesn't work) > > > order allow,deny > allow from all > > # block spamers: > deny from huawei.com > > > I'm still getting over 800-entires from: 114.119.128.0 - 114.119.191.255 I just noticed the address is not a /24 but a /18 address space! My mistake, the correct IP notation therefore becomes: 114.119.128.0/18 Or; 114.119.128.0/255.255.192.0 Don't forget to reload the apache config, or restart the server. If changes to the .htaccess do not work, this may mean the hosting company is overriding such directives with their configuration - you'll need to talk to them. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] apache htaccess - block IP range
I have tried (doesn't work) order allow,deny allow from all # block spamers: deny from huawei.com I'm still getting over 800-entires from: 114.119.128.0 - 114.119.191.255 Thelma On 03/17/2020 04:00 PM, Michael wrote: > Require not ip 114.119.128.0/255.255.255.0
Re: [gentoo-user] apache htaccess - block IP range
The below are not blocking those IP's : deny from 114.119.128.0/24 deny from 114.119.128.0 Thelma On 03/17/2020 04:00 PM, Michael wrote: > On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 21:56:29 GMT the...@sys-concept.com wrote: >> Will it work: >> deny from 114.119.128.0/114.119.191.255 >> >> Thelma > > It is better to use this syntax: > > > Require all granted > Require not ip XX.XXX.XX.XXX > > > > So your example address space becomes: > > Require not ip 114.119.128 > > Or; > > Require not ip 114.119.128.0/24 > > Or; > > Require not ip 114.119.128.0/255.255.255.0 > > > Look in Google for webpages providing geo-ip blocking advice, but China is > vast and so is their ability to buy/change more IP addresses per day. So > this > is a moving beast. > > HTH. >
Re: [gentoo-user] apache htaccess - block IP range
I'm still using apache 2.2 So I think it should be: deny from 114.119.128.0/24 With the: Require all granted Require not ip 114.119.128.0/24 I couldn't even access my own webpage from localhost. Thelma On 03/17/2020 04:00 PM, Michael wrote: > On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 21:56:29 GMT the...@sys-concept.com wrote: >> Will it work: >> deny from 114.119.128.0/114.119.191.255 >> >> Thelma > > It is better to use this syntax: > > > Require all granted > Require not ip XX.XXX.XX.XXX > > > > So your example address space becomes: > > Require not ip 114.119.128 > > Or; > > Require not ip 114.119.128.0/24 > > Or; > > Require not ip 114.119.128.0/255.255.255.0 > > > Look in Google for webpages providing geo-ip blocking advice, but China is > vast and so is their ability to buy/change more IP addresses per day. So > this > is a moving beast. > > HTH. >
Re: [gentoo-user] apache htaccess - block IP range
On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 21:56:29 GMT the...@sys-concept.com wrote: > Will it work: > deny from 114.119.128.0/114.119.191.255 > > Thelma It is better to use this syntax: Require all granted Require not ip XX.XXX.XX.XXX So your example address space becomes: Require not ip 114.119.128 Or; Require not ip 114.119.128.0/24 Or; Require not ip 114.119.128.0/255.255.255.0 Look in Google for webpages providing geo-ip blocking advice, but China is vast and so is their ability to buy/change more IP addresses per day. So this is a moving beast. HTH. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] apache htaccess - block IP range
Will it work: deny from 114.119.128.0/114.119.191.255 Thelma On 03/17/2020 03:47 PM, the...@sys-concept.com wrote: > How to block in .htaccess file certain IP range? > > I have bot from huawei.com on my server for several days: > IP: 114.119.128.0 - 114.119.191.255 > Or just block all China >
[gentoo-user] apache htaccess - block IP range
How to block in .htaccess file certain IP range? I have bot from huawei.com on my server for several days: IP: 114.119.128.0 - 114.119.191.255 Or just block all China -- Thelma
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.
Hello, On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, Grant Edwards wrote: >I've put five Samsung SATA drives into various things in the past few >years with flawless results. Samsung is one of the big manufacturers >of flash chips, so I figure they should always end up with 1st choice >quality chips in their own drives... And they produce and use their own controllers, so they additionally know the ins and outs of those, i.e. they can easily optimize the whole SSD from Flash-Chip over controller up to the firmware... Dunno if the same is true for Micron+Intel (IM Flash) / Crucial. Seems no, as e.g. the Crucial MX500 uses a Silicon Motion controller, even though Micron does (or did) produce controllers. Nor does WD, it seems. AFAIgathered, Samsung is the only one producing the whole product. Albeit, I heard rumours, that the various divisions of Samsung could as well be different manufacturers[1], but how far apart the Flash/Controller/SSD parts I have not an inkling ;) HTH, -dnh [1] well, considering that includes washing-machines, ships and whatnot ... ;) -- May I ask a question?
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
Hello, On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, Neil Bothwick wrote: >On Tue, 17 Mar 2020 10:43:58 +0100, Andrea Conti wrote: >> >> The SSD is currently reporting 98% of its rated life left: I feel >> >> quite confident it's going to outlast the laptop's useful life. >> > What are you using to get that niformation? >> >> smartctl -A /dev/sdX > >83% after five years of recompiling LO and Chromium, not bad :) # smartctl -a /dev/sda Device Model: SAMSUNG SSD 830 Series User Capacity:128,035,676,160 bytes [128 GB] Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical [..] 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 091 091 000Old_age Always - 42855 177 Wear_Leveling_Count 0x0013 093 093 000Pre-fail Always - 245 241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0032 099 099 000Old_age Always - 12835630376 [9 would be ~4.9 years nonstop, 241 is almost 6TiB written, or about 50ish full drive writes] That's been running here since Jul 2012, but I tried to reduce unnecessary writes to it. I did use it for PORTAGE_TMPDIR for a while but that rather quickly reduces the wear leveling from 96 to the current 93. HTH, -dnh -- The Royal Architects were tasked with constructing an edifice known as the Organisation's In[ft]ernal Webshite. It was grand, it was shiney, it was complex, and its navigability would seem to indicate the chief architect was the bastard child of Escher and Giger.-- Niklas Karlsson
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.
On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 12:33 PM Grant Edwards wrote: > > I've put five Samsung SATA drives into various things in the past few > years with flawless results. Samsung is one of the big manufacturers > of flash chips, so I figure they should always end up with 1st choice > quality chips in their own drives... > > -- > Grant Edwards grant.b.edwardsYow! Where's the Coke > at machine? Tell me a joke!! > gmail.com > I've had similar results with Crucial SSDs. Mark
[gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.
I've put five Samsung SATA drives into various things in the past few years with flawless results. Samsung is one of the big manufacturers of flash chips, so I figure they should always end up with 1st choice quality chips in their own drives... -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwardsYow! Where's the Coke at machine? Tell me a joke!! gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.
Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2020-03-17, Andrea Conti wrote: > >> "NAND flash" (as opposed to "NOR flash") refers to the way memory cells >> are organized and connected. See for example >> https://www.embedded.com/flash-101-nand-flash-vs-nor-flash/ >> >> AFAIK all SSDs use some variant of NAND flash. > Correct. NOR flash density is far lower than NAND flash. NOR is only > used for small applications (e.g. BIOS, small embedded systems). > Anytime you see sizes quoted in 'Gb' rather than 'Mb', you're > certainly talking about NAND. > > -- > Grant Thanks for the additional info. As I figured, they got most of the kinks worked out by now and we got some dependable SSDs to buy. I found a 240GB for a little over $42.00 USA. Not bad at all. For those curious: Sandisk SDSSDA240GG26 Should last me a good long while. It's the /home that keeps growing. o_O Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/Home2-Home2 8.1T 5.4T 2.7T 68% /home Dale :-) :-)
[gentoo-user] Re: SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.
On 2020-03-17, Andrea Conti wrote: > "NAND flash" (as opposed to "NOR flash") refers to the way memory cells > are organized and connected. See for example > https://www.embedded.com/flash-101-nand-flash-vs-nor-flash/ > > AFAIK all SSDs use some variant of NAND flash. Correct. NOR flash density is far lower than NAND flash. NOR is only used for small applications (e.g. BIOS, small embedded systems). Anytime you see sizes quoted in 'Gb' rather than 'Mb', you're certainly talking about NAND. -- Grant
[gentoo-user] Re: SDD strategies...
On 2020-03-17, Neil Bothwick wrote: > Same here. The main advantage of spinning HDs are that they are cheaper > to replace when they fail. I only use them when I need lots of space. Me too. If I didn't have my desktop set up as a DVR with 5TB of recording space, I wouldn't have any spinning drives at all. My personal experience so far indicates that SSDs are far more reliable and long-lived than spinning HDs. I would guess that about half of my spinning HDs fail in under 5 years. But then again, I tend to buy pretty cheap models. -- Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 1:59 AM wrote: > > The HD will contain the whole system including the complete root > filesustem. Updateing, installing via Gentoo tools will run using > the HD. If that process has ended, I will rsync the HD based root > fileystem to the SSD. > ... I'll go ahead and write one consolidated reply to a couple of points raised in these two threads to save everybody emails. First, I'll echo what was said about this being probably an overly-complex solution to the problem. I think you'll spend more time dealing with this than with any SSD failure issues. Next, in general you tend to get what you pay for. With SSDs if you're getting that bargain 512GB drive for $15 when all the comparable drives are $70, and it was made by some company you've never heard of, chances are that you're missing something. I'm not saying you need to go buy that 150% more expensive "signature edition" drive or whatever, though it might very well have some feature that justifies its price. Just be wary if things that look too good to be true. If you buy a reputable brand that is marketed for your intended use chances are you're getting something decent, even if you're paying 10% more. If you really know what you're doing you can certainly use research to save money by critically evaluating your options. Finally, ALL DRIVES FAIL. It doesn't matter what the underlying storage technology is. I've seen hard drives fail in less than a year, with the warranty replacement drive failing less than a year after that. I think next warranty replacement (still in the original warranty period) lasted 5+ years of near-continuous use. The typical failure modes of hard drives and solid state storage are different, but they all fail. You can't perfectly predict WHEN they will fail either. Most drives have SMART and sometimes it can detect failure conditions before failure, but not always. What will you do when your brand new drive fails 3 weeks after you buy it? If you don't have an answer that doesn't involve you losing stuff you don't want to lose, or having downtime you don't want to have, then you need to re-evaluate your approach. Backups and RAID are the obvious solutions - with backup generally being the more reliable solution to data loss, and RAID being the more reliable solution to downtime, but with them both having some overlap. Here is what I've done: 1. Preferred solution to SSD failure and associated downtime is RAID+backups. The most important stuff is backed up to the cloud, encrypted. With SSDs I usually do a full backup to hard drives since that is fairly inexpensive given their relative capacities. I'm using ZFS mirroring as my RAID-like solution right now, and I use ZFS-send/receive to do hourly backups that are very low overhead. 2. If I'm too cheap to use RAID on a host then I just do the hourly ZFS remote snapshots - that is a good solution on hosts where downtime doesn't matter, because I can just get a new drive and restore the snapshot and I'm back in business after a day or two, accepting a one hour recovery point objective. You can of course use rsync as well. For rsync-based backups I recommend rsnapshot, in portage. For zfs remote snapshots I have switched to zfs_autobackup: https://github.com/psy0rz/zfs_autobackup/blob/master/README.md -- Rich
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.
My mobo is just old enough to not support NVMe drives. I checked on
that a while back. It'll be old school SDDs, well, the ones that mount
hardware wise like HDDs anyway. It's not like SDDs are really that old.
We're talking about interface standards here, not form factors. SATA
drives use the good old SATA interface and for all intents and purposes
look just like HDDs to the BIOS and OS.
NVMe drives have an onboard controller that attaches directly to the PCI
express bus and use a completely different programming model for access.
Most consumer-grade 2.5" SSDs (those that "mount like HDDs") are SATA,
while board-mounted M.2 ("gumstick") drives can be either SATA or NVMe,
as the M.2 connector supports both standards.
If you have no M.2 connectors, you're safely stuck with SATA drives.
Avoid flash. Got it. A couple I looked at mentioned NAND. I'm
somewhat familiar with AND/NAND gates so I think those are different
from flash.
"NAND flash" (as opposed to "NOR flash") refers to the way memory cells
are organized and connected. See for example
https://www.embedded.com/flash-101-nand-flash-vs-nor-flash/
AFAIK all SSDs use some variant of NAND flash.
andrea
Re: [gentoo-user] swaps mounted randomly
Okay, I'll give that a try. But I was really hoping for something during the boot process. On 2020-03-17 14:14, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Tue, 17 Mar 2020 13:37:52 +0100, n952162 wrote: Question 2: how can one see the output from the RC "e-trace" statements (e.g. ebegin/eend)? I don't find it in /var/log/* How about: openrc-run --verbose /etc/init.d/localmount start Or use --debug for more info.
Re: [gentoo-user] swaps mounted randomly
On Tue, 17 Mar 2020 13:37:52 +0100, n952162 wrote: > Question 2: how can one see the output from the RC "e-trace" statements > (e.g. ebegin/eend)? > > I don't find it in /var/log/* > How about: openrc-run --verbose /etc/init.d/localmount start Or use --debug for more info. -- Neil Bothwick There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it would completely cover the Sahara Desert. pgpwE_O6EJGK8.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[gentoo-user] help with boot msgs and ext[2-4] question
Hello, I see this msg in /var/log/dmesg: [ 4.444826] EXT2-fs (sdb3): error: couldn't mount because of unsupported optional features (2c0) [ 4.468074] EXT4-fs (sdb3): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) but my system boots. Is the (2c0) the clue to what features are meant? Next question: From this article: /https://opensource.com/article/18/4/ext4-filesystem/ I get a good description of *journal*, *ordered* and *writeback* journaling levels and I wonder if my root filesystem should have *ordered* mode. I recently had a total crash of my ext3/4 root and home filesystems, where the directories were lost and I had to paste everything back together again by guess and by golly. In decades of linux usage, that's never happened to me on that scale. I'd hoped for more from journaling filesystems. Did it happen only because gentoo gave me *ordered* data mode by default and I should have had *journal*?
Re: [gentoo-user] swaps mounted randomly
There's new information on this, and new questions... I discovered that not only are my swaps not mounted, but the other filesystems listed in /etc/fstab aren't, either. These are, apparently, mounted by the localmount RC service. Its status is *started*. But if I /restart/ it, then my fstab filesystems get mounted. Question: /etc/init.d/localhost says: description="Mounts disks and swap according to /etc/fstab." but I can't see where that script mounts swaps. Is the description obsolete? Question 2: how can one see the output from the RC "e-trace" statements (e.g. ebegin/eend)? I don't find it in /var/log/* On 2020-03-04 09:09, n952162 wrote: Hi, I have 3 swap devices and files. At boot, it seems indeterminate which ones get "mounted" (as swap areas). Does anyone have an idea why they're not all mounted? Here are the swap lines from my fstab: #LABEL=swap none swap sw 0 0 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_DT01ACA300_-part1 none swap sw,pri=10 0 0 /swap none swap sw,pri=5 0 0 /lcl/WDC_WD20EFRX-68EUZN0_WD-yy/1/swap none swap sw,pri=1 0 0
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email. ‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐ On Tuesday, March 17, 2020 5:18 AM, Peter Humphrey wrote: > > Hm. My NVMe boot drive doesn't show a lifetime attribute, but my two 1TB SSDs > do, and they both show 100%, which makes me suspicious that either the data > are not being collected or they're being misinterpreted. > > - > > Regards, > Peter. At best that would be how much rewriting the cells still have left. Just as in hard drives there is no way of knowing when a random failure, due to a broken bond wire or a bad solder joint will occur. "Life time" can be calculated for hard drives as well, but that doesn't really mean it won't crap out tomorrow after claiming to have years left. If you really care about your' data, Raid (preferably raid 6 or better) and backups (preferably off site) are the only way to go. The issue is not usually end of trusted life, but rather random failure. I've barely managed to recover failed hard drives, That is less likely on SSD though possibly less likely to happen.
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 09:43:58 GMT Andrea Conti wrote: > On 17/03/20 10:03, Neil Bothwick wrote: > > On Tue, 17 Mar 2020 09:35:10 +0100, Andrea Conti wrote: > >> The SSD is currently reporting 98% of its rated life left: I feel quite > >> confident it's going to outlast the laptop's useful life. > > > > What are you using to get that niformation? > > smartctl -A /dev/sdX > > All SSDs I have expose a "life left" attribute, altough the specific > name and encoding of the value will vary. Hm. My NVMe boot drive doesn't show a lifetime attribute, but my two 1TB SSDs do, and they both show 100%, which makes me suspicious that either the data are not being collected or they're being misinterpreted. -- Regards, Peter.
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 08:35:10 GMT Andrea Conti wrote: > Hello, > > > SSDs are a common replacement for HDs nowaday -- but I still trust my > > HDs more than this "flashy" things...call me retro or oldschool, but > > it my current "Bauchgefühl" (gut feeling). > > The days of shitty JMicron stuff and OCZ drives dropping like flies are > long gone... O_O I have gentoo booting and running off an OCZ drive since the beginning of 2014. Emerges are on /tmp and /var/ is on a spinning disk. Everything is still running (keeps fingers crossed). I recall a statement from a guy who works in a data centre with 10s of thousands of drives, that SSDs have become more reliable than spinning disks. His replacement rate for spinning drives was significantly higher and their life span shorter. In his vew the business case for moving the whole farm to SSD was clear from a TCO perspective, not withstanding read/write access benefits. I should note I have left some space unallocated on the OCZ for wear levelling reasons - this may have helped in its longevity. In any case, regular back ups of the SSD will come in their own if the drive dies before I replace the PC. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
Neil Bothwick wrote: > On Tue, 17 Mar 2020 10:43:58 +0100, Andrea Conti wrote: > The SSD is currently reporting 98% of its rated life left: I feel quite confident it's going to outlast the laptop's useful life. >>> What are you using to get that niformation? >> smartctl -A /dev/sdX > 83% after five years of recompiling LO and Chromium, not bad :) > > Dang. That makes me feel better about getting one now. Heck, I'm using a 160GB drive currently for my OS. Even a 240GB SDD isn't bad nowadays. I could even make /boot much larger and install a rescue system on there, I think. Since sysrescue went sideways, not sure how that work anymore. I read sysrescue went to some other OS, which should work but you know. ;-) I think this is going to be neato. Now to save up and get one. O_O Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.
Andrea Conti wrote: >> So, before I find a SDD to buy, what are some things I should look for >> it to have and what are things I should avoid? > > I think the single most important thing is buying stuff from a > reputable brand (there's quite a number of those by now). Look at > reviews. Top-tier performance probably isn't going to matter much for > daily use, but I'd still look for a drive with a good warranty and a > high write endurance rating, even if it commands a premium. > > Avoid drives based on QLC flash (they still have reliability and > performance issues, and frankly prices aren't that great either). > > Most NVMe drives can only be booted from in UEFI mode (*), so if for > any reason you still need to boot from an SSD in legacy BIOS mode -- > stay safe and go for SATA or be sure to buy from a place with a good > return policy. > > (*) boot-time NVMe access relies on a boot ROM carried on the drive, > and most (all?) drives only have a UEFI ROM. While some UEFI firmwares > claim to have a "universal NVMe driver", my experience with those has > not been good. My mobo is just old enough to not support NVMe drives. I checked on that a while back. It'll be old school SDDs, well, the ones that mount hardware wise like HDDs anyway. It's not like SDDs are really that old. Avoid flash. Got it. A couple I looked at mentioned NAND. I'm somewhat familiar with AND/NAND gates so I think those are different from flash. That helps. > >> While at it, if I look for a NAS type HDD, would all those be PMR >> instead of SMR? > > I would expect any SMR drives sold at retail (i.e. not in USB boxes or > the like) to be clearly marked as such, since they are a niche product > with abysmal performance on common workloads. > > You're not going to silently get SMR drives in a NAS product line. > That's why I'm searching for a NAS drive. I figure that should weed out SMR drives pretty quickly. I don't mind it to much on my backup drive but I'm hoping to get rid of the one I have for /home and expand a bit. I may buy a 8TB drive and replace the 6TB drive that I currently have that is SMR. Later, I'll replace the 3TB with either a 6TB or 8TB drive. Since my external drive is 8TBs, I may have to recompute my backup drive situation. I'm likely to hit a few walls on that. Plus, NAS drives are designed more for my usage anyway. I have my system on 24/7. It's rare that I reboot since I run my TV off this rig plus am always downloading stuff. Heck, if it wasn't for updates to KDE and friends, I wouldn't even logout very often. >> From my understanding that should be correct. Mostly I >> buy WD, Seagate and Samsung. I've had a WD fail, I've had a Seagate >> fail. I'm not looking for a HDD flame up. O_o I'm starting to look at >> HGST. I think I got the spelling correct. Never had one tho. > > While Seagate seems to be the current leader in selling crap, I've had > all kind of drives die on me. Most notable are a couple of high-end > WDs literally going up in smoke some years ago, and an HGST going > belly up with a good impression of a machine gun just the other day. > > In general I've had good luck with 3TB HGST and Toshiba drives, though > the Toshibas I have are really HGST drives rebranded following a round > of company mergers and subsequent antitrust-driven spinoffs. > > WD Enterprise drives are quite good, but they do command a sizable > premium. > > I've not had any experience with "NAS" drives, nor with modern > helium-filled high-capacity drives. Apart from the unit price, I don't > need that much space and I'm not particularly keen on having that much > data go poof if a single device decides to stop working. > > andrea > > Yea, I've experienced the same here. What I've learned about hard drives is this, they break, regardless of brands. That said, there is some batches that prove to be problems but other than that, it's just a matter of time. None of them are designed to last forever. Even tho I've had a WD fail before, I still think they are very good. I just avoid those that are not made to handle my usage, being on 24/7 plus lots of read/writes. Thanks much for the info. Avoid flash. NAS should avoid SMR drives. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 09:15:58AM +, Peter Humphrey wrote: > On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 09:04:55 GMT Petr Vaněk wrote: > > > I use tmpfs to reduce compilation writes [1]. > > > > tmpfs /var/tmp/portage/ > > tmpfs uid=portage,gid=portage,mode=0775,size=2G,noatime 0 0 > > tmpfs /tmp/ tmpfs > mode=0777,size=1G,noexec,nosuid,noatime 0 0 > > > > 2G is usually enough for most of packages. > > > > [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Portage_TMPDIR_on_tmpfs > > Do you need to specify a size? I just let the kernel juggle the allocation of > memory to tmpfs and everything else. That is what it's for, no? :) No, you don't but then the system sets size to 50% of physical memory (see man 5 tmpfs). It is an upper bound, just in case if something strange happens.
Re: [gentoo-user] Pocket sneaks back
On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 04:42:12 GMT Dale wrote: > Matt Connell wrote: > > On 2020-03-16 19:46, Dale wrote: > >> Anything that can do, I can do locally by saving a web page or > >> downloading the content. Firefox has this functionality for people who have multiple devices and are not able or want to save content locally and want to discover similar articles/pages without carrying out their own web search manually and be able to access them from other devices too, potentially when offline. > > Pocket is easily replaced by just synchronizing bookmarks, for most > > people's purposes, and FF already supports that. Pocket, at least in its premium paid for service, is more than a bookmark syncronization service between devices alone. It is utilizing a 3rd party's cloud servers to store content and send this content to your devices, using a Firefox account. In addition, webpages uploaded to Pocket's servers are cleaned from adverts and extraneous content, can be tagged for easier referencing/search, have their text size adjusted for easier reading, etc. I don't know to what extent content is drawn dynamically from the original website and modified on the fly when a user logs in and requests it, or if it is stored on Pocket's servers and remains available even after the original website ceases to exist. Arguably Dale already does all most of this for himself, personally, locally and privately, without sharing *his* data with anyone else - unless he explicitly wishes to do so. Other users don't/can't and Pocket caters to their needs. Mozilla uses some anonymizing/obfuscating mechanism for storing your Firefox account and associated data on the cloud and Mozilla claim they don't share personally identifiable information with anyone else. > > If you need more than that, I can recommend Wallabag for link-saving. I > > use it as my "read later" list. > > Since I backup my /home directory, I have that already. Based on what > the link claims, it allows you to watch videos, read articles and such > later even if offline. If I like a page, I save it or print it as a pdf > or copy and paste it into LOo. It might be a long way around but it > makes it available even if the website removes content or shuts down > completely, forever. Yep, your data, under your ownership and free (as in freedom) access. > Still, I likely don't understand all it does but I disabled it since I > don't think it serves a purpose here for me anyway. Maybe others will. > > I wonder what else Firefox does I don't know about > > Dale > > :-) :-) In a proliferation of 'cloud services', 'user accounts', 'mobile apps', multi- device data access, etc. it is important to satisfy yourself a service provider's Business Model is not somehow orthogonal to your personal data security, privacy, rights and preferences. With Mozilla the picture is mixed. Mozilla Foundation is a not-for-profit organization established to lead the open source Mozilla project. All this is good I hear you say, but then comes Mozilla Corp. a subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation. The Mozilla Corp. outfit is for-profit, pays taxes and it reinvests all of its profits back into the Mozilla project. This was needed to overcome financial considerations a not-for-profit organization cannot engage with. Still good. Here comes the rub. Pocket contains closed source code and any statements about being converted into open source have yet to materialize. Also, the business model of surveillance capitalism is endemic in all business affiliates of Mozilla Corp. and the way they make money - with your data. So even if Mozilla Corp. is not using/abusing your private data, its affiliates are in business to do just that. I suggest the saying "if its free, your are the product" applies here too. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
On Tue, 17 Mar 2020 10:43:58 +0100, Andrea Conti wrote: > >> The SSD is currently reporting 98% of its rated life left: I feel > >> quite confident it's going to outlast the laptop's useful life. > > What are you using to get that niformation? > > smartctl -A /dev/sdX 83% after five years of recompiling LO and Chromium, not bad :) -- Neil Bothwick A wok is what you throw at a wabbit. pgpsh_REIvFtd.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
On 17/03/20 10:03, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Tue, 17 Mar 2020 09:35:10 +0100, Andrea Conti wrote: The SSD is currently reporting 98% of its rated life left: I feel quite confident it's going to outlast the laptop's useful life. What are you using to get that niformation? smartctl -A /dev/sdX All SSDs I have expose a "life left" attribute, altough the specific name and encoding of the value will vary. andrea
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.
So, before I find a SDD to buy, what are some things I should look for it to have and what are things I should avoid? I think the single most important thing is buying stuff from a reputable brand (there's quite a number of those by now). Look at reviews. Top-tier performance probably isn't going to matter much for daily use, but I'd still look for a drive with a good warranty and a high write endurance rating, even if it commands a premium. Avoid drives based on QLC flash (they still have reliability and performance issues, and frankly prices aren't that great either). Most NVMe drives can only be booted from in UEFI mode (*), so if for any reason you still need to boot from an SSD in legacy BIOS mode -- stay safe and go for SATA or be sure to buy from a place with a good return policy. (*) boot-time NVMe access relies on a boot ROM carried on the drive, and most (all?) drives only have a UEFI ROM. While some UEFI firmwares claim to have a "universal NVMe driver", my experience with those has not been good. While at it, if I look for a NAS type HDD, would all those be PMR instead of SMR? I would expect any SMR drives sold at retail (i.e. not in USB boxes or the like) to be clearly marked as such, since they are a niche product with abysmal performance on common workloads. You're not going to silently get SMR drives in a NAS product line. From my understanding that should be correct. Mostly I buy WD, Seagate and Samsung. I've had a WD fail, I've had a Seagate fail. I'm not looking for a HDD flame up. O_o I'm starting to look at HGST. I think I got the spelling correct. Never had one tho. While Seagate seems to be the current leader in selling crap, I've had all kind of drives die on me. Most notable are a couple of high-end WDs literally going up in smoke some years ago, and an HGST going belly up with a good impression of a machine gun just the other day. In general I've had good luck with 3TB HGST and Toshiba drives, though the Toshibas I have are really HGST drives rebranded following a round of company mergers and subsequent antitrust-driven spinoffs. WD Enterprise drives are quite good, but they do command a sizable premium. I've not had any experience with "NAS" drives, nor with modern helium-filled high-capacity drives. Apart from the unit price, I don't need that much space and I'm not particularly keen on having that much data go poof if a single device decides to stop working. andrea
Re: [gentoo-user] os-prober fails sucessfully
On Tue, 17 Mar 2020 03:00:59 -0500, Dutch Ingraham wrote: > Also from [1], with emphasis added "30_os-prober this script uses > **os-prober to search for Linux** and other operating systems and places > the results in the GRUB 2 menu. > > A review of the scripts 10_linux and 30_os-prober supplied by Gentoo > with the grub and os-prober packages seems to confirm the Ubuntu > documentation's accuracy. > > Regardless of which script is responsible, the problem remains that > running 'grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg' under the circumstances > outlined in my original post should find the other Linux operating > systems, but doesn't. You're right, either things have changed since the days I used GRUB extensively or I am losing it. No, that's not a multiple choice question! Have you tried running the script with "sh -x" to see just what it is doing? I wonder if it could be this part if ! command -v os-prober > /dev/null || ! command -v linux-boot-prober >/dev/null ; then # missing os-prober and/or linux-boot-prober exit 0 fi If the os-prober command is missing the script will fail successfully, as you experience. Is sys-boot/os-prober installed? -- Neil Bothwick A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it. pgpbBSU1Tb2lt.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 09:04:55 GMT Petr Vaněk wrote: > I use tmpfs to reduce compilation writes [1]. > > tmpfs /var/tmp/portage/ > tmpfs uid=portage,gid=portage,mode=0775,size=2G,noatime 0 0 > tmpfs /tmp/ tmpfs mode=0777,size=1G,noexec,nosuid,noatime 0 0 > > 2G is usually enough for most of packages. > > [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Portage_TMPDIR_on_tmpfs Do you need to specify a size? I just let the kernel juggle the allocation of memory to tmpfs and everything else. That is what it's for, no? :) -- Regards, Peter.
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 06:59:53AM +0100, tu...@posteo.de wrote: > Hi, > > currentlu I am setting up a new PC for my 12-years old one, > which has reached the limits of its "computational power" :) > > SSDs are a common replacement for HDs nowaday -- but I still trust my > HDs more than this "flashy" things...call me retro or oldschool, but > it my current "Bauchgefühl" (gut feeling). > > To reduce write cycles to the SSD, which are quite a lot when using > UNIX/Limux (logging etc) and especially GENTOO (compiling sources > instead of using binary packages -- which is GOOD!), I am planning > the following setup: > > The sustem will boot from SSD. > > The HD will contain the whole system including the complete root > filesustem. Updateing, installing via Gentoo tools will run using > the HD. If that process has ended, I will rsync the HD based root > fileystem to the SSD. > > Folders, which will be written to by the sustem while running will > be symlinked to the HD. > > This should work...? > > Or is there another idea to setup a system which will benefit from > the advantages of a SSD by avoiding its disadvantages? I use tmpfs to reduce compilation writes [1]. tmpfs /var/tmp/portage/ tmpfs uid=portage,gid=portage,mode=0775,size=2G,noatime 0 0 tmpfs /tmp/ tmpfs mode=0777,size=1G,noexec,nosuid,noatime 0 0 2G is usually enough for most of packages. [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Portage_TMPDIR_on_tmpfs Petr
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
On Tue, 17 Mar 2020 09:35:10 +0100, Andrea Conti wrote: > The SSD is currently reporting 98% of its rated life left: I feel quite > confident it's going to outlast the laptop's useful life. What are you using to get that niformation? > That's not a single datapoint; every system I have around has used an > SSD as a primary disk for years now, and I've yet to see one fail or > develop any kind of corruption issue. In the same timespan I've had a > fair number of HDD failures. Same here. The main advantage of spinning HDs are that they are cheaper to replace when they fail. I only use them when I need lots of space. -- Neil Bothwick God is real, unless specifically declared integer. pgpYy0LZ8QeUR.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
Hello, SSDs are a common replacement for HDs nowaday -- but I still trust my HDs more than this "flashy" things...call me retro or oldschool, but it my current "Bauchgefühl" (gut feeling). The days of shitty JMicron stuff and OCZ drives dropping like flies are long gone... you are not going to encounter write endurance problems with a modern SSD from a reputable brand and any kind of reasonable workload. Stay clear from QLC drives and you'll be fine. I have a laptop with a 256GB Plextor M5M SSD installed in 2014. I dual boot Gentoo and Windows, and in addition to the normal stuff, on the Gentoo side I do a couple of world updates per week -- which with a full KDE desktop involves quite a bit of compiling and writing around. The SSD is currently reporting 98% of its rated life left: I feel quite confident it's going to outlast the laptop's useful life. That's not a single datapoint; every system I have around has used an SSD as a primary disk for years now, and I've yet to see one fail or develop any kind of corruption issue. In the same timespan I've had a fair number of HDD failures. The HD will contain the whole system including the complete root filesustem. Updateing, installing via Gentoo tools will run using the HD. If that process has ended, I will rsync the HD based root fileystem to the SSD. > Folders, which will be written to by the sustem while running will be symlinked to the HD. This should work...? It will probably work, if you hack at it long enough :D But seriously, what's the point? Setting up a patchwork of a filesystem like that and maintaining it in time is going to be a complexity and reliability nightmare: if you're going to those lengths because you don't trust SSDs, why have an SSD at all? andrea
Re: [gentoo-user] os-prober fails sucessfully
On 3/16/20 3:47 PM, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Mon, 16 Mar 2020 12:51:06 -0500, Dutch Ingraham wrote: Hi all. I'm having a problem with os-prober not finding other linux partitions. I'm on x86_64 and an old spinning drive with an msdos partition table and 4 primary partitions, 3 linux and 1 swap. os-prober runs successfully as per bash's return code, but no partitions are found. os-prober scans for non-Linux operating systems. /etc/grub.d/10_linux is the script responsible for finding Linux installations. That is not my understanding. From [1], "10_linux identifies kernels on the root device for the operating system in use and creates menu entries for these items." I take this to mean 10_linux is the script responsible for identifying the currently booted system (i.e., the "root device." Also from [1], with emphasis added "30_os-prober this script uses **os-prober to search for Linux** and other operating systems and places the results in the GRUB 2 menu. A review of the scripts 10_linux and 30_os-prober supplied by Gentoo with the grub and os-prober packages seems to confirm the Ubuntu documentation's accuracy. Regardless of which script is responsible, the problem remains that running 'grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg' under the circumstances outlined in my original post should find the other Linux operating systems, but doesn't. [1] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Setup
[gentoo-user] SDD, what features to look for and what to avoid.
Howdy, Tuxic's recent thread brought me back to looking at SDDs again. I recently learned about HDDs having SMR instead of PMR and how that can be a negative in some situations. I've since found out that one of my /home drives is a SMR. I didn't know to look at that when I bought it. So, before I find a SDD to buy, what are some things I should look for it to have and what are things I should avoid? I'm sure SMR and PMR doesn't apply here but I bet you gurus have ran up on things the hard way to either avoid or make sure SDDs have. As is, the OS itself is on sda. That includes everything except /home which is on two drives using LVM. It's about 9TBs or so I think. One 6TB drive, SMR I'm afraid to admit, and a 3TB drive that I'm pretty sure is PMR. I may put /var on a HDD since it changes a good bit. Everything else, except /home, would be on the SDD. Anyone care to share? While at it, if I look for a NAS type HDD, would all those be PMR instead of SMR? From my understanding that should be correct. Mostly I buy WD, Seagate and Samsung. I've had a WD fail, I've had a Seagate fail. I'm not looking for a HDD flame up. O_o I'm starting to look at HGST. I think I got the spelling correct. Never had one tho. Thoughts? Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
tu...@posteo.de wrote: > Hi, > > currentlu I am setting up a new PC for my 12-years old one, > which has reached the limits of its "computational power" :) > > SSDs are a common replacement for HDs nowaday -- but I still trust my > HDs more than this "flashy" things...call me retro or oldschool, but > it my current "Bauchgefühl" (gut feeling). > > To reduce write cycles to the SSD, which are quite a lot when using > UNIX/Limux (logging etc) and especially GENTOO (compiling sources > instead of using binary packages -- which is GOOD!), I am planning > the following setup: > > The sustem will boot from SSD. > > The HD will contain the whole system including the complete root > filesustem. Updateing, installing via Gentoo tools will run using > the HD. If that process has ended, I will rsync the HD based root > fileystem to the SSD. > > Folders, which will be written to by the sustem while running will > be symlinked to the HD. > > This should work...? > > Or is there another idea to setup a system which will benefit from > the advantages of a SSD by avoiding its disadvantages? > > Background: I am normally using a PC a long time and try to avoid > buying things for reasons like being more modern or being newer. > > Any idea to setup such a sustem is heardly welcone -- thank you > very much in advance! > > Cheers! > Meino > I don't have a SDD here but may one day. Here's my thinking. Set up a chroot or a virtual machine thingy on a regular hard drive. Copy your OS to that, do the updates and then copy packages over to your running system. Then you just emerge -k world and all it does is install binaries on the running system using the SSD. The other benefit of this is a much faster update on the running system. Also, if you get part way through a update, qt or KDE for example, you don't end up with a running system with mismatched versions and possibly a system that doesn't function correctly or won't let you do anything at all, or login even. You can fix the build problems in the chroot/VM and use the running system in the meantime. I started doing this recently because I ran into issues where KDE/qt/something else was not completely updated due to failed compiles that stopped the updates. Some programs I needed wouldn't start or no longer would work correctly if already started. It saves me some grief but would keep the larger writes off your SSD and on a HDD. Oh, if the HDD were to fail, no loss there either. Replace it and start over. I have some scripts, that's a VERY generous use of the word, that I use to mount the chroot, copy the updates over and copy the packages over when compiling is done. I'm still perfecting this but so far, it is working nicely and should work for you as well. Someone else may have a even better idea tho. Dale :-) :-)
[gentoo-user] SDD strategies...
Hi, currentlu I am setting up a new PC for my 12-years old one, which has reached the limits of its "computational power" :) SSDs are a common replacement for HDs nowaday -- but I still trust my HDs more than this "flashy" things...call me retro or oldschool, but it my current "Bauchgefühl" (gut feeling). To reduce write cycles to the SSD, which are quite a lot when using UNIX/Limux (logging etc) and especially GENTOO (compiling sources instead of using binary packages -- which is GOOD!), I am planning the following setup: The sustem will boot from SSD. The HD will contain the whole system including the complete root filesustem. Updateing, installing via Gentoo tools will run using the HD. If that process has ended, I will rsync the HD based root fileystem to the SSD. Folders, which will be written to by the sustem while running will be symlinked to the HD. This should work...? Or is there another idea to setup a system which will benefit from the advantages of a SSD by avoiding its disadvantages? Background: I am normally using a PC a long time and try to avoid buying things for reasons like being more modern or being newer. Any idea to setup such a sustem is heardly welcone -- thank you very much in advance! Cheers! Meino
