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#1 2009-04-01 21:14:41

brisbin33
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From: boston, ma
Registered: 2008-07-24
Posts: 1,796
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Minilogd on EEE PC, kill it?

so i read some wiki tips saying i should do everything i can to limit the number of writes to my SSD as there's a finite amount and i can increase the life of my device with some easy tricks.

one of these tricks was to not log to /var/logs on the SSD.  eventually i plan to put an SD Card in the slot and log to that drive instead.  in the meantime i've disabled syslog-ng with "!syslog-ng" in DAEMONS.

a few days back i noticed a process in htop called minilogd.  i had never noticed this before and googled it.  basically it's supposed to log early events before syslog starts.  then the starting of syslog automatically stops minilogd.

1) how necessary is it that i stop logging, i mean am i adding years to the life of my SSD, or just days?
2) if syslog never starts, is it safe to put `pkill minilogd` or similar in rc.local
3) how can i stop minilogd from starting all together (if logging does in fact = very bad)
EDIT, line 26 /etc/rc.sysinit; forget #3... and #2, i guess this post has drifted a bit...

thanks for the help.

Last edited by brisbin33 (2009-04-01 21:20:42)

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#2 2009-04-03 07:36:48

dangsos
Member
Registered: 2009-03-06
Posts: 28

Re: Minilogd on EEE PC, kill it?

I've read that newer SSDs have a longer life than HDD even with intensive reading/writing being done to them....and that if you are anything less than running a server, you should be fine.

Wish I knew what forum I read that linked to that website anf I'd link it for you to read. Also note that I'm no computer jargin expert so I may have been misunderstanding the read.

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#3 2009-04-03 07:58:20

josomebody
Member
Registered: 2008-06-20
Posts: 190

Re: Minilogd on EEE PC, kill it?

I've seen some pretty optimistic numbers regarding SSD life as well, like around 50 years with the kind of precautions recommended in the wiki, and not too bad without. Doesn't hurt to take the precautions anyway if you have no need for persistant logs though.


: () { : | :& } ;:

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#4 2009-04-03 08:52:49

bender02
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From: UK
Registered: 2007-02-04
Posts: 1,328

Re: Minilogd on EEE PC, kill it?

I think that *logging* per se is a good thing - when something starts to go wrong, you'll know where to start looking for error messages. If you don't care about keeping the logs across reboots, i think you're better off mounting /var/log as tmpfs (temporary filesystem which resides in memory). That way you still have immediate logs, but they aren't written permanently anywhere. Doable by putting:

none /var/log tmpfs defaults,size=20M 0 0

into your fstab.

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#5 2009-04-03 13:42:21

brisbin33
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From: boston, ma
Registered: 2008-07-24
Posts: 1,796
Website

Re: Minilogd on EEE PC, kill it?

bender02, that sounds like the perfect temporary (wordplay!) solution.  as i said, i hope to grab a MicroSD soon to pop in and use for /var/logs but until then, this should work great.

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#6 2009-04-03 14:38:50

Mektub
Member
From: Lisbon /Portugal
Registered: 2008-01-02
Posts: 647

Re: Minilogd on EEE PC, kill it?

In /etc/fstab I have.

none                    /var/log    tmpfs    defaults,size=10M    0    0

and in /etc/rc.local.shutdown:

echo "Copying LOGs..."

now=`date +"%Y%m%d_%Hh%m"`
mkdir -p /logs_backup/$now
cp -Rp /var/log/* /logs_backup/$now/

Mektub


Follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/johnbina

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#7 2009-04-03 15:48:58

brisbin33
Member
From: boston, ma
Registered: 2008-07-24
Posts: 1,796
Website

Re: Minilogd on EEE PC, kill it?

Mektub, many thanks i've now implemented this... small fix:

%Hh%m --> %Hh%M

smile

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#8 2009-04-06 15:46:56

dangsos
Member
Registered: 2009-03-06
Posts: 28

Re: Minilogd on EEE PC, kill it?

so does anyone have any good numbers for the life expectancy for these newish SSDs hitting the market?  I'd like to know if I have a good 10 years out of my eeepc1000

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