I have done some searches and can’t find any mention of this so the question is, regardless of which Distro you choose to replace old Linpus on your AOA110L, either with 8 or 16GB SSD, what file system are people using/choosing/recommending?
I get the impression from the HowTo Peppermint install threads, is that people are choosing the deafult which probably means EXT4? Is there not an issue with using a Journaled File System on these old SSDs, which presumably is why Linpus uses EXT2 and not EXT3 which was available at the time?
Obviously, the noatime mount mods and the /tmp to RAM will help, but I like my old AOA and wouldn’t want to kill the SSD due to making the wrong choice, when I finally get round to replacing Linpus.
Are people also setting up Peppermint/Bohdi/Lubuntu with enoguh swap so that Hibernate can be used, also? (one reason I want to ditch Linpus, is I really could do with Hibernate).
Personally I think tweaking the file system is probably a bit unecessary, but for those with the skill level it may get a *little" further milage out of an SSD.
I think unlike a desktop/full laptop, data on the SSD once set up is rarely going to change … specially if you save stuff to an SDcard
I do use the “noatime” fstab option, just because it’s easy … and have wrestled with the idea of disabling journaling on the default EXT4 file system, though I haven’t bothered.
If I were going to go for a non-journaled file system, that’s the way I’d go … EXT4 with “has_journal” disabled rather than EXT2
bunging /tmp to RAM may be worthwhile, as this is the data that will change the most (also writing the web caches to RAM may be a good idea too) … and with the AA1’s SSD not supporting TRIM, you may end up using the same sectors repeatedly.
I’m still more of the opinion that the SSD will die when it dies … here’s my take - at some point in the life of an AA1 the SSD will probably die and need replacing, by the time the second one dies something else will most likely have died too … which is pretty much par for the course with an HDD system, so why worry about it
I don’t use hibernate, so /swp size wasn’t really an issue … plus the fact that I’ve maxed out the RAM to 1.5GB, I wouldn’t want to set aside that much space of an 8GB SSD anyway
I’ve got the 1GB/16GB SSD, so can spare a gig for swap//hibernation. I notice on the original Linpus build, there is hardly ay logging to /var/log, presumably, to stop the SSD from expiring too soon.
I don’t suppose there is a way of figuring out how much lifespan is left in your SSD? (and what the replacement options are (I feel some searching coming on… ))
I’m also thinking about figuring out a way to commit /vat/log/kern.log to disc on shutdown, so that with /tmp to RAM, at least is persisted and any problems might be able to be investigated, and hopefully survive a reboot…
I don't suppose there is a way of figuring out how much lifespan is left in your SSD? (and what the replacement options are (I feel some searching coming on... ;) ))
I don’t think it’s possible to see how many write operations have been carried out, but after reading that some people have had luck reviving dead SSD’s by flashing the firmware:
I’m beginning to wonder if the firmware does keep a record, and may even be killing the SSD on purpose.
Though if it IS keeping a record of sector writes, why no TRIM support ???
I’m not sure what you mean by “and what the replacement options are” … but it IS possible to fit the AA1 with a 1.8" IDE (PATA) ZIF HDD, as used in the early iPods … Google it, there are tutorials out there
BTW, there’s a video (and a .pdf) on this forum somewhere about dismantling the AA1 … let me know if you can’t find it and I’ll try provide links.
The only tricky part s removing the keyboard … after that it’s one of the easiest laptop/netbooks to dismantle I’ve ever come across
Would have been nice if they’d fitted trap doors though, to save the hassle of having to dismantle to add RAM or replce the SSD … but you can’t have everything
I have created partitions for root, swap & home.
Hibernation in Bodhi worked OTB with 1GB swap (although have 1.5GB ram)
I personally opted for EXT2 on the AOA110L, with 8 GB SSD along with number of
ssd specific tweaks like pointing browser cache, moving temporary and log files into the memory.
The only problem I found that when my daughter accidentally removed the battery the /home partition needed fsck to be forced
but other than that no trouble at all.
Well I bit the bullet, shrunk the 13GB partition that holds Linpus to 5GB and gave the spare 8GB to Lubuntu, and everything went perfectly. Linpus still works fine, but Lubuntu 12.04 flies! Hibernation works out of the box (using the same swap partition as Linpus), and I can find nothing I don’t like about it (and plenty I do). Firefox 15 is smooth and fast, and I’m enjoying having up to date versions of everything (especially NFS, which Linpus was v.old and rubbish on!).
I mounted the new EXT4 partition (kept Journalling on, fingers crossed on longevity ) with the suggested noatime, changed the scheduler/elevator to noop and put /tmp /var/tmp and /var/log to RAM, as well as puttnig Firefox’s cache to /tmp as well.
