Putting Mageia on a SSD

[dwhite]

I tried to do this a couple of years ago but it didn't work out and I went back to HDD. I read if you optimise the distribution with 'Trim' and use 4fs you should be fine at least for 51 years,
how do I enable Trim for my Drive.?

[dbg]

https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation_on_a_SSD_%28Solid_State_Drive%29

Basically you set up a cron job to run fstrim once per day.

[dwhite]

I was thinking of migrating the / and /usr partitions To the SSD and leave the rest on the HDD

[dbg]

From what I understand, it is writing to a SSD that will eventually wear it out. So keeping things like /tmp, /home and /var/log on a HDD is a good idea. Also, any swap partition could go on a HDD.

[doktor5000]

It's not about wear-out, but about flash cells needing to be deleted before they can be written.
And the point of an SSD is to speed-up the system, so I'd definitely put /home on the SSD, the same as / and /var/log from your example.
swap should be tmpfs.

[dwhite]

Yes, the point is to speed up the system, but I've read as yet some Linux distributions or so I've read don't sense an install on a SSD or HDD so you can't just load it and let the program dracinstall is it, sort it out. That may not be true any longer at least as far as Mageia is concerned, how should I set my system then? Trim should be enabled as the SSD cells have be Zeroed to be re-written UNLIKE A HDD and one should use 4sf, I've only ordered a 120Gb SSD but that should be enough.

[doktor5000]

As you don't provide any details about your system (partitions etc.) install Mageia on the SSD and then follow the wiki page.
Not sure what you're asking for exactly.

[dwhite]

Thought my signature did! Though when the extra equipment comes I'll post my real fstab that should give you something to work with. I think the fstab will show to one SSD one HHD and one optical drive

[doktor5000]

Your signature does not show any information that would help to adress your question, nor does it show if you have other OS beside Mageia or anything else that would be relevant for this topic. If it would show, I'd not ask. And fstab is pretty useless for that, too - better show the output of

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fdisk -l

and

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lsblk -f

- the latter please as root, otherwise some information will be missing

[dwhite]

my current fstab -l

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Disk /dev/sda: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x0005dce0

Device    Boot     Start       End    Blocks  Id System
/dev/sda1 *         2048  25189919  12593936  83 Linux
/dev/sda2       25192440 976768064 475787812+  5 Extended
/dev/sda5       25192448  33367004   4087278+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6       33370112 976768064 471698976+ 83 Linux

[root@localhost dwhite64]#

That's my current lsblk -f
sda                                                     
├─sda1 ext4         bc0bb0d5-a355-4a41-af4f-73f1c85f2fb3 /
├─sda2                                                   
├─sda5 swap         d2501573-78e2-435b-98fe-15ab4ad383eb [SWAP]
└─sda6 ext4         525c1553-fe68-4f1d-983b-06bd18cd4452 /home


I'll take the opportunity to upgrade the case and power supply

[dwhite]

I've done some things, put all the old kit into the new Zalman case new 600w PSU too the spacers I ordered are black nylon but they are M2 not M3 so they need a 2M nut to lock them to the case, need a spot light to see anything now it's gone so dark. to connect the front panel,
When the SSD carrier comes I plan on wiring the SSD with trim as either sda1 or sda2 and the optical on the other channel.
What I think now I'm going to do if I can't find and enable trim is move the / and /usr to the SSD perhaps even make the partitions read only leave the rest on the HDD.

[doktor5000]

You only have / and /home partition, no /usr. Also why make them readonly?
Simply install Mageia to the SSD and setup TRIM as via the wiki.

[dwhite]

Read only might not be necessary, but I've been burned once and a little belt and braces won't hurt the speed I'll get. If I make a mistake on setting up trim, setting ro flags on the SSD will stop me ending up with expensive junk in a few months.



So all I really need to do is set trim and I can use the SSD as a HDD? It's elegant I'll say that.


Well it's all assembled. I'm using M3 at the moment 'cos I haven't got M4 on a DVD. The thumb drive sockets are crap on the new box. I've used my old HHD for the /home, swap and /var, I need to enable Trim but I don't suppose that's very desperate now. I wanted to keep my data and I've accomplished that.

[doktor5000]

You don't even need to enable TRIM. On the other hand, why do you think that TRIM would be harmful for the SSD?
Only downside of not enabling TRIM would be that once all blocks of the SDD have been written once, that for each block
to write it needs to delete it before writing to it. That is what TRIM prevents.

I've ran my SSD without TRIM for nearly a year, with no obvious performance impact and heavy read/write operations
(compiling for package building and so on). Once I ran fstrim / and fstrim /home it trimmed away over 70GB of blocks
online without any impact.

Can't comprehend what you're concerned about in particular.

[dwhite]

I don't think trim would be harmful

[doktor5000]

Then why did you mention this?

If I make a mistake on setting up trim, setting ro flags on the SSD will stop me ending up with expensive junk in a few months.

Apart from that, this would also stop all Mageia updates or other updates to / or /usr.

[dwhite]

remember writing that, I was under-lining how easy it is for me to make typos. Without a spell-checker I'd be lost. I have double-vision, so I often hit keys that are next to the one I'm aiming at. That's a point has TRIM a GUi? Though when I started GUI's were optional,

This is my current table as it says sectors aren't on physical boundaries I guess that means it needs sorting?

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[root@localhost dwhite64]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 111.8 GiB, 120034123776 bytes, 234441648 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.

Device    Boot     Start       End    Blocks  Id System
/dev/sda1 *         2048  16370234   8184093+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2       16373700 234436544 109031422+  5 Extended
/dev/sda5       16373760 166995674  75310957+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6      166998016 234436544  33719264+ 83 Linux


Disk /dev/sdb: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x0005dce0
Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.

Device    Boot     Start       End    Blocks  Id System
/dev/sdb1 *         2048   6570584   3284268+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb2        6574050 976768064 485097007+  5 Extended
/dev/sdb5        6574080  16643339   5034630  83 Linux
/dev/sdb6       33370112 976768064 471698976+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb7       16646144  33367004   8360430+ 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order.
NAME   FSTYPE LABEL UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
sda                                                     
├─sda1 ext4         f7f00506-1899-43b8-8d53-7f949f3d178f /
├─sda2                                                   
├─sda5 ext4         211e3339-de0a-4f52-a622-9e0e65ed7f8b /usr
└─sda6 ext4         208d2a33-205f-4aea-8c84-c14ced0f4620 /usr/local
sdb                                                     
├─sdb1 swap         34b16731-4fdd-4581-ba7d-3e1be132e046 [SWAP]
├─sdb2                                                   
├─sdb5 ext4         b82deb6d-32c2-4a82-bc34-c5111da2806b /var
├─sdb6 ext4         525c1553-fe68-4f1d-983b-06bd18cd4452 /home
└─sdb7 ext4         c11186cd-ae17-4c57-b9f5-7ff0f2287033 /tmp
sr

[dwhite]

Has Magira any plans to enable FSTRIM as default and have dracinstall draw partitions optionally for SSD's.even a big HDD could live with 2048mib cells on it

If I work out the numbers and re-write on Gparted will that impose them on the partition table or can just I put them in the Mageia tool

While I was trying to align the SSD partitions with an install I was distracted and allowed dracinstall to Quick format the /home partition Luckily it's on a HDD and Gparted has a data recovery tool So now I'm in for a lot of work
I re-sized my /swap, /var, and /home, and all my files are back Gparted said nothing to find.