You will have to power the system down, and remove your 9 year old SSD so you can read the label or printing; then we'll know the make and model of it.
Help with GParted -- no swap file after standard installation.
- Thread starter Straitsfan
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To get the disk model and manufacturer from software you can run the following command as root:
Code:
fdisk -lAn alternative to finding the model and manufacturer without running as root is to look at the output of the disk in the directory: /dev/disk/by-id, and extract the alpha-numeric associated with the disk which again can be entered into a search engine to find the exact make and model details. This means also sees the serial number which one may wish to keep private.
On the original issue, the output of of the lsblk command in post #20 shows a SWAP partition of 3.8G.
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Condobloke
Well-Known Member
This means you're using LVM. or (LVM2)
You don't have a physical swap partition, you have a logical swap partition.
Programs like Gparted are fine for physical disks and physical partitions, but they don't know anything about about logical volumes.
What is the output of..
Code:
df -h
Code:
sudo lvs
Code:
sudo swapon --show
Code:
lvdisplayThe output from these commands should show your swap partition (if you are using one).
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Linux Distros now come with a Swap File of 2GB that's created when you install your Distro and you don't need to touch it.
Back in the old days of 32 bit systems...you were limited to a small amount of Ram which meant you needed a Swap Partition of the same size of Ram installed.
Those days are long gone...today Swap is not needed because you can add heaps of Ram...
As you can see...I have 16GB of Ram and a Swap File of 2GB that's not used and will never be used because I can add another 16GB of Ram if I like. The more you multi-task...the more Ram you need...more is always better.
Back in the old days of 32 bit systems...you were limited to a small amount of Ram which meant you needed a Swap Partition of the same size of Ram installed.
Those days are long gone...today Swap is not needed because you can add heaps of Ram...
As you can see...I have 16GB of Ram and a Swap File of 2GB that's not used and will never be used because I can add another 16GB of Ram if I like. The more you multi-task...the more Ram you need...more is always better.
Here's some details that explain the issue of swap usage on older SSDs.
The Core Problem: Limited Write Endurance
Imagine an old notebook where you can only erase and rewrite each page a limited number of times. Swap space is like constantly using the same few pages of that notebook over and over again. On older SSDs, which had a much lower limit on how many times each 'page' could be rewritten, this constant use could wear them out very quickly. Modern SSDs are much better at spreading out the wear, like using all the pages of the notebook evenly.
In summary ...
The Core Problem: Limited Write Endurance
- How SSDs Work (Simplified):
- SSDs store data in flash memory cells.
- Writing data to these cells causes wear and tear.
- Each cell has a limited number of write cycles (P/E cycles) before it becomes unreliable.
- Older SSDs and Write Endurance:
- Early SSDs had significantly lower write endurance compared to modern drives.
- They also lacked sophisticated wear-leveling algorithms.
- Wear leveling is a crucial technology that distributes write operations evenly across all memory cells, preventing any single cell from wearing out too quickly.
- Swap's Heavy Write Load:
- Swap space (whether a partition or a file) is used by the operating system to move less frequently used data from RAM to the storage drive.
- This process involves frequent read and write operations, especially when RAM is limited.
- On older SSDs, this constant writing can rapidly consume the available write cycles, leading to premature failure.
- Constant Activity:
- Swap is not just used occasionally. In systems with limited RAM, it can be accessed very frequently.
- This makes it a source of constant writes.
- Random Writes:
- Swap files and partitions are written to and read from in a very random pattern. This random pattern is less ideal for older SSDs, than sequential writes.
- Lack of Wear Leveling:
- Older SSDs lacked the sophisticated wear-leveling algorithms found in modern drives. This means that the swap space could repeatedly write to the same memory blocks, quickly wearing them out.
Imagine an old notebook where you can only erase and rewrite each page a limited number of times. Swap space is like constantly using the same few pages of that notebook over and over again. On older SSDs, which had a much lower limit on how many times each 'page' could be rewritten, this constant use could wear them out very quickly. Modern SSDs are much better at spreading out the wear, like using all the pages of the notebook evenly.
In summary ...
- Older SSDs had significantly lower write endurance.
- Swap space involves frequent write operations.
- The lack of effective wear leveling in older SSDs made them vulnerable to premature failure from heavy swap usage.
- Modern SSDs are much more robust, and this issue is much less of a concern.
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Now, what year did write leveling become common?
TL;DR
From what I found, it was considerably longer than 9 years ago!
You don't have to be concerned. Go ahead and use a swap partition or swap file if you want, according to the other answers here.
By the early to mid 2010s, wear leveling was a very common feature of SSDs.
It would still be nice to know the make and model.
TL;DR
From what I found, it was considerably longer than 9 years ago!
You don't have to be concerned. Go ahead and use a swap partition or swap file if you want, according to the other answers here.
By the early to mid 2010s, wear leveling was a very common feature of SSDs.
It would still be nice to know the make and model.
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
@Straitsfan ...: https://www.linux.org/threads/help-...after-standard-installation.55565/post-260021It would still be nice to know the make and model.
Speaking of SSDs...when you install a Distro...one of the very first things you do is Optimize the SSD.
By doing this your SSD will run more efficiently and last a long time...I have Trim set to run daily but I can run the Trim command manually any time.
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/ssd.html
https://www.baeldung.com/linux/solid-state-drive-optimization
By doing this your SSD will run more efficiently and last a long time...I have Trim set to run daily but I can run the Trim command manually any time.
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/ssd.html
https://www.baeldung.com/linux/solid-state-drive-optimization
Thank you. I've never heard of F2FS.
A cron job (?) here runs fstrim -av, but I must confess that I occasionally run sudo fstrim -av
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One thing missing from the second link is that we should enable AHCI mode for optimal SSD performance.
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To give another perspective, I haven't manually run the trim command for at least a decade and likely longer (other than to run it out of curiosity or for the sake of writing an answer or article). Modern SSDs are pretty awesome and Linux automatically does what it needs to do.
I have SSDs that are at least that old.
I was an early adopter where SSDs are concerned.
You DEFINITELY needed to pay attention to trim back then. The early drives were not very good. They weren't even all that reliable. Back then, I kept things backed up on traditional hard drives. Today, my NAS is stuffed with SSDs, with an NVMe kept for caching.
So, personally, I'd not worry too much about using an SSD or even paying attention to it. They've come a long way and the MTBF is much longer than I'm likely to use a drive - by a mater of years.
I have SSDs that are at least that old.
I was an early adopter where SSDs are concerned.
You DEFINITELY needed to pay attention to trim back then. The early drives were not very good. They weren't even all that reliable. Back then, I kept things backed up on traditional hard drives. Today, my NAS is stuffed with SSDs, with an NVMe kept for caching.
So, personally, I'd not worry too much about using an SSD or even paying attention to it. They've come a long way and the MTBF is much longer than I'm likely to use a drive - by a mater of years.
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
If you want the reasonably easy way to set the whole thing up, I followed the instructions from :
easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com
quite some time ago. It works. How do I know it works?....by copy/pasting in this: journalctl | grep fstrim.service
which produces:
brian@brian-desktop:~$ journalctl | grep fstrim.service
Feb 17 00:04:42 brian-desktop systemd[1]: Starting fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab...
Feb 17 00:05:10 brian-desktop systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Deactivated successfully.
Feb 17 00:05:10 brian-desktop systemd[1]: Finished fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab.
Feb 24 04:54:50 brian-desktop systemd[1]: Starting fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab...
Feb 24 04:55:20 brian-desktop systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Deactivated successfully.
Feb 24 04:55:20 brian-desktop systemd[1]: Finished fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab.
brian@brian-desktop:~$
I initially had weekly trimming in place, but decided later that weekly was not enough....mainly due to the amount of use my pc gets.....so I switched it to Daily
You can use the following blurb anyway...regardless if you have set it up before or not.
You can switch your system to automatic daily trimming as follows:
a. Copy/paste the following command line into the terminal, in order to create a new folder:
sudo mkdir -v /etc/systemd/system/fstrim.timer.d
Press Enter. Type your password when prompted. In Ubuntu this remains entirely invisible, not even dots will show when you type it, that's normal. In Mint this has changed: you'll see asterisks when you type. Press Enter again.
b. Copy/paste the following command line into the terminal, in order to create a new file in that new folder:
sudo touch /etc/systemd/system/fstrim.timer.d/override.conf
Press Enter.
c. Copy/paste the following command line into the terminal, in order to edit the new file:
xed admin:///etc/systemd/system/fstrim.timer.d/override.conf
(Note: The three consecutive slashes aren't a typo, but intentional! For Ubuntu: type gedit instead of xed.)
Press Enter.
d. Now copy/paste this blue text into that empty text document:
[Timer]
OnCalendar=
OnCalendar=daily
Note: The double entry for OnCalendar is no mistake but intentional!
Save the modified file and close it.
e. Reboot your computer.
f. Confirm that you've successfully edited trim's configuration by executing this terminal command:
systemctl cat fstrim.timer
Your output should look approximately like this:
# /lib/systemd/system/fstrim.timer
[Unit]
Description=Discard unused blocks once a week
Documentation=man:fstrim
ConditionVirtualization=!container
[Timer]
OnCalendar=weekly
AccuracySec=1h
Persistent=true
[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target
# /etc/systemd/system/fstrim.timer.d/override.conf
[Timer]
OnCalendar=
OnCalendar=daily
Let's take a closer look at this output. The first part shows the default setting (weekly), the second part shows the overriding setting that you've applied. That overriding setting contains two elements: first the existing OnCalendar setting (weekly) is being deleted by specifying nothing after the = sign, and then a new OnCalendar setting is being applied (daily).
If you ever want to check whether fstrim has actually happened, and when it happened, you can use this terminal command:
journalctl | grep fstrim.service
SSD: how to optimize your Solid State Drive for Linux Mint and Ubuntu
Easy tips, tweaks and tricks for Linux Mint and Ubuntu, both for beginners and for advanced users. Complete starter's guide with simple how-to's.
easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com
quite some time ago. It works. How do I know it works?....by copy/pasting in this: journalctl | grep fstrim.service
which produces:
brian@brian-desktop:~$ journalctl | grep fstrim.service
Feb 17 00:04:42 brian-desktop systemd[1]: Starting fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab...
Feb 17 00:05:10 brian-desktop systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Deactivated successfully.
Feb 17 00:05:10 brian-desktop systemd[1]: Finished fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab.
Feb 24 04:54:50 brian-desktop systemd[1]: Starting fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab...
Feb 24 04:55:20 brian-desktop systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Deactivated successfully.
Feb 24 04:55:20 brian-desktop systemd[1]: Finished fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab.
brian@brian-desktop:~$
I initially had weekly trimming in place, but decided later that weekly was not enough....mainly due to the amount of use my pc gets.....so I switched it to Daily
You can use the following blurb anyway...regardless if you have set it up before or not.
You can switch your system to automatic daily trimming as follows:
a. Copy/paste the following command line into the terminal, in order to create a new folder:
sudo mkdir -v /etc/systemd/system/fstrim.timer.d
Press Enter. Type your password when prompted. In Ubuntu this remains entirely invisible, not even dots will show when you type it, that's normal. In Mint this has changed: you'll see asterisks when you type. Press Enter again.
b. Copy/paste the following command line into the terminal, in order to create a new file in that new folder:
sudo touch /etc/systemd/system/fstrim.timer.d/override.conf
Press Enter.
c. Copy/paste the following command line into the terminal, in order to edit the new file:
xed admin:///etc/systemd/system/fstrim.timer.d/override.conf
(Note: The three consecutive slashes aren't a typo, but intentional! For Ubuntu: type gedit instead of xed.)
Press Enter.
d. Now copy/paste this blue text into that empty text document:
[Timer]
OnCalendar=
OnCalendar=daily
Note: The double entry for OnCalendar is no mistake but intentional!
Save the modified file and close it.
e. Reboot your computer.
f. Confirm that you've successfully edited trim's configuration by executing this terminal command:
systemctl cat fstrim.timer
Your output should look approximately like this:
# /lib/systemd/system/fstrim.timer
[Unit]
Description=Discard unused blocks once a week
Documentation=man:fstrim
ConditionVirtualization=!container
[Timer]
OnCalendar=weekly
AccuracySec=1h
Persistent=true
[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target
# /etc/systemd/system/fstrim.timer.d/override.conf
[Timer]
OnCalendar=
OnCalendar=daily
Let's take a closer look at this output. The first part shows the default setting (weekly), the second part shows the overriding setting that you've applied. That overriding setting contains two elements: first the existing OnCalendar setting (weekly) is being deleted by specifying nothing after the = sign, and then a new OnCalendar setting is being applied (daily).
If you ever want to check whether fstrim has actually happened, and when it happened, you can use this terminal command:
journalctl | grep fstrim.service
I missed this.
Sadly, AHCI can mess with certain distros. While it's not too common, we sometimes have to have people toggle AHCI in their BIOS (technically UEFI, I suppose) settings. If you are curious, use the search for 'AHCI' and skim a few topics.
No, I do not know why. I only know that we sometimes have to have them toggle it - usually turning it off.
Interesting. How does AHCI mess with certain distros?
It won't boot to the distro after installation. That's the most common thing. I believe in some instances it has also failed during the installation process when writing to disk.
I only know that it sometimes needs to be toggled from whatever setting it was on and that it's usually turning it off that solves the problem. I say 'usually' because I dimly recall an instance where they actually had to enable it to work. That could be a faulty memory.
I do not know the mechanism behind it but have stumbled across it myself on an Intel system.
At the same time, I would not suggest it as a default. Try the installation with AHCI enabled and then toggle it if you have problems. It's the same view I take with secure boot. Try with it enabled. If it doesn't work, turn it off.
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