[ltp] Re: Set-up for an x301?

Stefan Monnier linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:43:43 -0500


>> >>>*) Which file-system should I use for the SSD drive (or which
>> >>>file-system should I avoid)?
>> >
>> >>I would use the default FS of your distribution.
>> >>I'm not sure if there is anything optimized for
>> >>SSDs yet.
>> >
>> > EXT3 it is then...
>> >
>> Some links you might be interested in:
>> 
>> http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=52503
>> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acer_Aspire_One
>> http://blogs.zdnet.com/perlow/?p=9190

> This whole SSD business seems to be full with superstition and "old
> knowledge", or at the least different opinions:
> http://robert.penz.name/137/no-swap-partition-journaling-filesystem-on-a-ssd/
> The real truth probably lies in between somewhere.

> However, the first three tweak suggestions of the zdnet link sounds
> reasonable to me, even though the first tweak does not seem to apply for
> the x301.

Having looked at it in various different contexts (16MB flash on home
router, 512MB flash on SD card for smartphone, and 120GB on SSD drive),
I think my conclusion is that journaling is not a problem.  `swap' is
usually not a problem either (assuming you have enough RAM that you
don't thrash all the time).  `relatime' (or even `noatime') is also
a good recommendation.

As for syslogging, it's usually not a problem either, although you may
occasionally get some nasty bug in some software that ends up spewing
tons and tons of syslog messages, so I simply use busybox's syslogd
which has the option to log to a circular buffer in RAM rather than
to disk, which is usually sufficient for my uses.  It also eliminates
the need for logrotate.


        Stefan