(SOLVED)ssd support

[patrickdarcy]

i am gonna get an ssd drive in the next few weeks and i would like to know what
i have to do to make it work properly. i want a 120gb vertex 3 drive.

do i have to add commands through the command line or does mageia just
pick up the drive as an ssd and go with it ?

thanks

[djennings]

Mageia will just recognise the SSD like any other disc drive. Use diskdrake in Mageia Control Centre to define the mount point and options.

Wear of SSD's is no longer the problem it used to be, but all the same it is sensible to avoid unnecessary writes to the drive. To avoid unnecessary writes you should set either the 'noatime' or 'relatime' option. You can do this either in diskdrake, or by editing the /etc/fstab file directly. I think Mageia defaults to using relatime, but I may be wrong.

noatime directs linux to not write the 'last accessed' time of a file every time it is read.
relatime directs linux to only update the 'last accessed time' when a file is written.

You do not mention if you intend to reinstall Mageia using this new SSD or if you intend to use it as an additional drive.
If you intend mounting the drive on a directory under /home there will be no issue. If you intend to mount it elsewhere you may need advice on how to do it in a running system.

[doktor5000]

diskdrake should have no problem aligning the partitions, which was a longstanding problem. But as djennings already asked, what do you intend to do with the SSD?
IMHO the most efficient use case is booting from it and having /home on it, otherwise it would be just a waste of money ...

[patrickdarcy]

yes, i want to use it as my only drive. i will boot from it.

i dont done some research and i will need to turn on trim it seems and use noatime
and i believe that is all i need to do.

would that be correct ?

[djennings]

Thanks for reminding me about Trim. When I first got my SSD Mageia 1 did not support trim so it was useful to remind me to look at it again.

According to Suse the support for trim in ext4 can degrade performance rather than improve it in pre 3.1 kernels. I have not been able to establish if this is still true for the 3.3 kernel in Mageia
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:SSD_discard_(trim)_support#Kernel_support

To use trim with ext4 the SSD has to be using AHCI in the BIOS setup which is not supported by all motherboards

You can get around these issues by using the user space utility fstrim from the util-linux package to periodically perform a trim using a cron job (once a week is adequate)

[wilcal]

I picked up this tip for SSD usage on a Mozilla forum:

Set Firefox to use memory cache instead of HD for speed or SSD

1. open up about:config (type it into the url bar)
2. type browser.cache into the filter bar at the top.
3. Find browser.cache.disk.enable and set it to false (by double clicking on it).
4. set browser.cache.memory.enable to true
5. create a new preference by right clicking anywhere, hit New, and choose Integer.
6. Call the new preference browser.cache.memory.capacity and hit OK.
7. In the next window, where it asks for the number of kilobytes you want to assign
to the cache, just enter -1 to tell Firefox to dynamically determine the cache size.

I'm using a:

OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-128G 2.5" 128GB SATA III

On my Mageia2 64-bit video editing platform. Also plugged
into the machine is a Seagate 1TB SATA III drive for storage
of the working video files. I am extremely satisfied with the
results.

[patrickdarcy]

i got my ssd installed. during the install i set the noatime for both my partitions and
saved them.

i dont understand about the config thing u mentioned
maybe u can explain it to me.

i do want to mention that i installed mageia 2 in 9 minutes. pretthy fast so far

[wilcal]

i dont understand about the config thing u mentioned
maybe u can explain it to me.

As I have read it Firefox/Mozilla uses the HD for
temporary storage. The above changes to Firefox
moves that temp storage to RAM.

[patrickdarcy]

i understand what it does i just dont understand how to get there.

[patrickdarcy]

also here is hdparm test on my system

dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 6704 MB in 2.00 seconds = 3352.64 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 718 MB in 3.00 seconds = 239.22 MB/sec

[doktor5000]

Well, wilcal posted some easy steps where the configuration is described, which one you have problems with?

[patrickdarcy]

u got it. i was having a little problem with one of the . i believe i got it set now, thanks

[patrickdarcy]

and now another question. for the last couple of years or so i have been
using a ocz throttle 32gb flash drive. i did not use trim and i did not make
any adjustments as to the options for the drive.

it seems to work fine without any changes.

i will forgo trim for now unless it needs to turned on.

and if it needs to be on how do i do that.

[wilcal]

FWIW there is some rough information that using

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

on an SSD drive will revive a busted storage
cell. Or actually force the drive to delete
the usage of that cell and move the storage
point to a spare cell. Do note that this
utility works the s..t out of any drive to
force the reallocation process so on an SSD
drive some feel that it also may be distructive.

[patrickdarcy]

also i have posix control list i believe it is called enabled along with noatime.

is this good ?

[patrickdarcy]

acl keep turning itself on on my system.

enable posix access Control Lists.

also i am having a problem with my computer.

after running for a couple of days and i keep my computer running 24 7 running
folding at home and mageia torrents . if i shut my system down it wont reboot.
i get a messing that says cannot log on /. patrick , then temps full ?

temps full does have a question mark on it.

this has only happend since i installed my ssd.

any ideas ?

thanks

[doktor5000]

Provide the output of

Code: Select all

df -h

[doktor5000]

i made a change to my hd system

i changed noatime to relatime

here is the infor u asked for

Code: Select all

[root@localhost patrick]# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs          115G  5.7G  104G   6% /
devtmpfs        3.9G     0  3.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs           4.0G  1.3M  4.0G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           4.0G  828K  4.0G   1% /run
/dev/sda1       115G  5.7G  104G   6% /
tmpfs           4.0G     0  4.0G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda6       105G  3.7G  101G   4% /home
[root@localhost patrick]#

[doktor5000]

Please, can you use code tags when you post such output? ftp://ftp.mandrivauser.de/rpm/rpm/extra ... e_tags.ogv

So far everything looks good and empty. When such an error comes up next time, please either post it here directly or note it down,
so that we get the exact message. Otherwise the thread seems [SOLVED] or not yet?

[patrickdarcy]

something is wrong.

here is my output again.

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs 155G 6.4G 141G 5% /
devtmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 4.0G 1.9M 3.9G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 4.0G 588K 4.0G 1% /run
/dev/sda1 155G 6.4G 141G 5% /
tmpfs 4.0G 0 4.0G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda5 69G 5.8G 63G 9% /home
[root@localhost patrick]#


this looks ok but when i now run filelight i am only seeing 68 gigs as home with 8 percent used.

my trash can it acting strange also. it looks empty but when i move the cursor over it it shows i have removed files in it.

how do i set my system up to delete temp files each time i reboot.

[patrickdarcy]

i forgot i had reinstalled mageia and made the home partititon smaller.

my only problem is my trash can. it looks empty but has files in it.
i cant get to be no files in it.

sorry for the bother.

[doktor5000]

Please, can you use code tags when you post such output? ftp://ftp.mandrivauser.de/rpm/rpm/extra ... e_tags.ogv

Apart from that, 68GB vs 69GB and 8% vs. 9% probably comes from a rounding difference. You may want to have a look at something like http://blogs.gnome.org/cneumair/2008/09 ... 000-bytes/

If you want to be really sure how many space is used, use du as root:

Code: Select all

du -hs /home

^^^^ shows the space used in GiB (-h for human-readable), and only a summary (-s)

Code: Select all

du -ms /home

^^^^ shows the space used in MiB (-h for human-readable), and only a summary (-s)

Code: Select all

du -ks /home

^^^^ shows the space used in KiB (-h for human-readable), and only a summary (-s)

For the trash can, you need to look for hidden files inside ~/.local/share/Trash/files/ or just empty it.