Arch on SSD

amenditman · 2010-10-14 13:10:22

Wanted to know if anyone has installed Arch on SSD and what specific steps you took.

Patitioning scheme?
Changes during install? Have they worked out?
Extra steps taken, scripts run, file edits?

General suggestions based on experience.

I have read all the articles on ArchWiki relating to this topic, just want to get some feedback from actual users prior to executing my plan.

Thanks

KimTjik · 2010-10-14 14:01:21

Have you checked the Wiki? There's a SSD specific entry.

ozar · 2010-10-15 00:36:31

Search the forums, too. There are a number of recent threads about running Arch on SSDs.

On mine, I don't do anything out of the ordinary except direct some of the disk writes to RAM and use the noatime and discard options in fstab, along with changing the scheduler in rc.local.

fukawi2 · 2010-10-15 02:40:29

morpheus ~ $ df -h | grep sda
/dev/sda1             773M   30M  704M   5% /boot
morpheus ~ $ sudo lvscan | grep SSD
  ACTIVE            '/dev/SSD/root' [2.00 GiB] inherit
  ACTIVE            '/dev/SSD/var' [8.00 GiB] inherit
  ACTIVE            '/dev/SSD/usr' [8.00 GiB] inherit
morpheus ~ $ mount | grep SSD
/dev/mapper/SSD-root on / type ext2 (rw,noatime,errors=continue)
/dev/mapper/SSD-usr on /usr type ext2 (rw,noatime)
/dev/mapper/SSD-var on /var type ext2 (rw,noatime)

martinium · 2010-10-15 03:50:34

I'm using arch on my SSD and didnt do anything like this. Do I need to do this? My ssd is running blazing fast it automatically has garbage collection and trim in firmware.

fukawi2 · 2010-10-15 05:52:44

martinium wrote:

I'm using arch on my SSD and didnt do anything like this. Do I need to do this? My ssd is running blazing fast it automatically has garbage collection and trim in firmware.

Probably not.

amenditman · 2010-10-19 16:33:41

ozar wrote:

Search the forums, too. There are a number of recent threads about running Arch on SSDs.
On mine, I don't do anything out of the ordinary except direct some of the disk writes to RAM and use the noatime and discard options in fstab, along with changing the scheduler in rc.local.

What disk writes do you send to RAM? I am doing a tmpfs for /tmp to RAM, are you doing more than that? Could you tell me why if you are?
Which scheduler are you changing to and why? Is it an ssd model specific decision or is it due to some Arch consideration?

Thanks for all the feedback.

nicedream · 2010-10-26 17:05:30

amenditman wrote:

Wanted to know if anyone has installed Arch on SSD and what specific steps you took.

Hi. I run Arch on my laptop, and I documented all the changes I use here. (Make sure you read all three pages).

martinium wrote:

I'm using arch on my SSD and didnt do anything like this. Do I need to do this? My ssd is running blazing fast it automatically has garbage collection and trim in firmware.

Even if your SSD firmware supports trim, you still have to mount your partitions with the 'discard' option in order for your OS to send the trim commands to the drive.

dhave · 2010-11-19 22:34:53

nicedream wrote:

Hi. I run Arch on my laptop, and I documented all the changes I use here. (Make sure you read all three pages).
...
Even if your SSD firmware supports trim, you still have to mount your partitions with the 'discard' option in order for your OS to send the trim commands to the drive.

Thanks for this info. I've got a 120Gb SSD arriving tomorrow, and I'm seeing that it's going to need some special treatment to run properly.

I'm still trying to figure out how best to divvy up my partitions. My other drive is pretty big -- 500Gb -- and I'll be booting from the SSD and, as much as possible, running Arch from there, with the 500Gb drive as a data repository. But I'm not quite sure what the optimal setup will be. Fortunately, there's a lot that I can read about between now and delivery time.

graysky · 2010-11-19 23:01:34

+1 for the wiki -- I wrote that page for a reason

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSD

My partition scheme (SSD + HDD):

$ cat /etc/fstab
/dev/dvd    /media/dvd  auto    ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
none    /tmp    tmpfs    nodev,nosuid,nodiratime,noatime,size=2000M,mode=1777    0    0

devpts                 /dev/pts      devpts    defaults            0      0
shm                    /dev/shm      tmpfs     nodev,nosuid,size=7G        0      0

# SSD ; root=sdx1 ; home=sdx2
/dev/disk/by-uuid/f2e1b010-e657-4364-acd0-45ed3f9f20c1    /   ext4    defaults,noatime,discard    0       1
/dev/disk/by-uuid/f9a4b647-3934-4ce0-946c-3b7026b1fde8    /home       ext4    defaults,noatime,discard    0       2

# HDD ; var=sdx2 ; boot=sdx5 ; data=sdx6
/dev/disk/by-uuid/2562sba2-0137-46e4-9a40-062c6f9b1f66    /var    ext4    defaults,relatime    0    1
/dev/disk/by-uuid/0fc7f4d20-0b1e-4e26-860c-6e63dd3a35ea    /boot    ext3    defaults,relatime    0    1
/dev/disk/by-uuid/4D0185gs6C18065A    /media/data    ntfs-3g    defaults,umask=002,fmask=113,gid=100,uid=1000    0    0

Last edited by graysky (2010-11-19 23:01:55)

dhave · 2010-11-19 23:08:37

graysky wrote:

+1 for the wiki -- I wrote that page for a reason

I'm deep into the wiki article right now. Thanks for taking the time to put that together. I'd hate to think that I've got this fantastic new device and am not getting the best use of it.

dhave · 2010-11-23 03:31:57

Welp, I succeeded, though only after a couple of do-overs. My main challenge was that I was installing a 120Gb SSD for my primary Arch system, i.e., bootable, which meant that I had to use grub2 if I wanted to partition with gdisk. (And I wanted to partition with gdisk in order to optimize alignment.) I wasn't familiar with either grub2 or GUID conventions, so I had to do some homework.

I installed Arch from a LiveCD but had only a wifi connection. I had some trouble configuring the wifi connection -- don't know why; this nothing to do with the SSD, of course. But this made it impossible for me to grab the grub2 package that I needed to install a bootloader that would work with GUID partitions. Grub2 isn't on the May 2010 LiveCD, and legacy Grub apparently won't boot GUID partitions. I finally broke down and went into the other room, where I have an ethernet cable connected to my router.

Grub2 took some getting used to; I had to tweak the cfg file that resulted from auto configuration in order get it to see my disk properly. This was because, following graysky's wiki page on SSDs, I had set aside partition 1 as a 1Mb type ef02 reserved partition. But I managed after a couple of false starts.

I also needed some time to get my fstab set up properly to recognize both my SSD and my old hard drive. I finally went over entirely to GUID naming conventions for all my partitions, both on the SSD and the HD. Though those long ID strings are a little mind-boggling to take in at first, I'm already much happier with an absolute ID as opposed to /dev/sda and /dev/sdb, etc. Each partition -- not just each drive -- gets a unique GUID. I don't know that grub2 requires GUIDs, but I was having some device confusion prior to entering all my partitions' GUIDs into my fstab. It all works perfectly with unique identifiers.

Performance is simply stellar. I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to a spinning-platter disk. When I have to pull in some data from my 7200RPM "legacy" hard drive, I find myself getting impatient. How quickly our expectations get ratcheted up by new hardware!

Big apps like openoffice and gimp that used to take 11-12 whole seconds to launch (an eternity, it seems now) come up instantly. That's cool. KDE4 responds more like openbox. And I won't even try to describe the difference in boot time. (O.K., I will: from grub2 to full KDE -- after splash and initialization screens -- in 17 seconds. I'm sure this took at least 90+ seconds before.)

This 120Gb Intel SSD is going for just over 200 bucks and seems well worth it to me. Obviously I'm going to have to keep my old hd around to store the bulk of my data, but it's really nice to have an Arch system that boots like a flash and runs like the wind. It's by far the biggest performance increase I've ever experienced, including numerous CPU and RAM upgrades in years past.

Thanks, graysky, for the excellent wiki page, without which I would have been lost.

Last edited by dhave (2010-11-23 06:26:57)

evot · 2010-11-24 08:14:22

I agree about performance. SSD is really significant performance boost.
I also use KDE on SSD and it's just really snappy.

Ones you used to it's speed you can't be without.

milomouse · 2010-12-19 21:36:21

At the sake of posting yet another SSD thread I'll just ask a quick question here (if that's ok since this is one of the more recent threads on the topic and is rather general):

Does 'native TRIM' mean that it's firmware related and that I don't have to specifically have a filesystem that "enables" TRIM? Or does that just mean I don't have to use some script or software (etc) to do garbage collecting or whatnot. My main concern is whether or not I can use a filesystem that's not Ext4, btrfs or Nilfs2 (the SSD-friendly filesystems). I just wonder if it will be ok to use another filesystem that wont reduce the life or performance of the SSD somehow. Anyway, that's my quick question. I hope it's ok. :}

graysky · 2010-12-19 22:00:32

@mm - firmware to active on ext4 via the mount discard option. No scripts needed

milomouse · 2010-12-19 23:08:19

@graysky: Thanks for your answer (and Wiki, which I where I gathered a lot of my info!). I believe I understand but just want to make sure (at the sake of sounding simple)... I should use ext4, btrfs or nilfs2 because the other non-SSD-aware filesystems (JFS, Reiser4, etc) will not activate TRIM, correct?

In theory, I could use those other filesystems but they would hinder the performance and/or garbage collecting, etc, also using "useless" algorithms not needed in SSDs as far as data positioning, rotation, decay, etc, also correct? I'm not terribly knowledgeable in SSDs but am trying to learn the mechanics before going in one direction completely.

As far as ext4, it seems the numerous benchmarks I've read/viewed, being maintained by the kernel(?), and the 'discard' feature make it the most viable choice. I was hoping I didn't have to use it since I've had bad experiences with it in the past but perhaps things have changed. Oh well. :} I haven't had any problems with btrfs but the SSD mode seems poor to me. I've had degrading performance when it's activated. I've only tested nilfs2 briefly, but read (no sources atm) that it will continuously snap even when idle. Maybe it's a setting. Anyway!

graysky · 2010-12-19 23:17:34

AFAIK, ext4 with discard is the way to go. So I think the answer to your question is yes. I would be more interested in btrfs if it had repair options w/ fsck but currently does not.

milomouse · 2010-12-19 23:21:34

Figures Thanks for all the info, by the way. Dually appreciated

Arch Linux

#1 2010-10-14 13:10:22

Arch on SSD

#2 2010-10-14 14:01:21

Re: Arch on SSD

#3 2010-10-15 00:36:31

Re: Arch on SSD

#4 2010-10-15 02:40:29

Re: Arch on SSD

#5 2010-10-15 03:50:34

Re: Arch on SSD

#6 2010-10-15 05:52:44

Re: Arch on SSD

#7 2010-10-19 16:33:41

Re: Arch on SSD

#8 2010-10-26 17:05:30

Re: Arch on SSD

#9 2010-11-19 22:34:53

Re: Arch on SSD

#10 2010-11-19 23:01:34

Re: Arch on SSD

#11 2010-11-19 23:08:37

Re: Arch on SSD

#12 2010-11-23 03:31:57

Re: Arch on SSD

#13 2010-11-24 08:14:22

Re: Arch on SSD

#14 2010-12-19 21:36:21

Re: Arch on SSD

#15 2010-12-19 22:00:32

Re: Arch on SSD

#16 2010-12-19 23:08:19

Re: Arch on SSD

#17 2010-12-19 23:17:34

Re: Arch on SSD

#18 2010-12-19 23:21:34

Re: Arch on SSD

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