From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue May 29 18:05:38 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6A83310658F4 for ; Tue, 29 May 2012 18:05:32 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rsmith@xs4all.nl) Received: from smtp-vbr13.xs4all.nl (smtp-vbr13.xs4all.nl [194.109.24.33]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EF77D8FC0C for ; Tue, 29 May 2012 18:05:31 +0000 (UTC) Received: from slackbox.erewhon.net (slackbox.xs4all.nl [213.84.242.160]) by smtp-vbr13.xs4all.nl (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id q4TI5041029526; Tue, 29 May 2012 20:05:01 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from rsmith@xs4all.nl) Received: by slackbox.erewhon.net (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 9D7C912343; Tue, 29 May 2012 20:05:00 +0200 (CEST) Date: Tue, 29 May 2012 20:05:00 +0200 From: Roland Smith To: Christer Solskogen Message-ID: <20120529180500.GA92876@slackbox.erewhon.net> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="u3/rZRmxL6MmkK24" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-GPG-Fingerprint: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 X-GPG-Key: http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/pubkey.txt X-GPG-Notice: If this message is not signed, don't assume I sent it! User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-Virus-Scanned: by XS4ALL Virus Scanner Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List Subject: Re: newfs on a SSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 29 May 2012 18:05:38 -0000 --u3/rZRmxL6MmkK24 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 09:01:33AM +0200, Christer Solskogen wrote: > After years of waiting for a decent price on one of these I finally > got one. The questions is, which options should I use on a SSD that > will be / on my system. I see that newfs supports TRIM, so that will > be turned on, but should I use journaling? gjournal? softupdates? soft > updates journaling? I'm confused :) Enabling TRIM with the '-t' option for newfs sounds like a good idea. Assum= ing the underlaying device supports it. You can check that with the 'camcontrol identify' command, assuming you're using the ada(4) driver. OCZ has a page with tips for Linux. Some would apply to FreeBSD as well; http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?54379-Linux-Tips-twe= aks-and-alignment&highlight=3Dlinux Aligning the partitions with the Erase Block Size is important. See:=20 https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives One thing to keep in mind is to mount the filesystems you make on the SSD w= ith the "noatime" option. This to avoid a lot of unnecessary writes. Some of the newfs parameters like blocks per cilinder group don't seem to m= ake much sense for an SSD. Since the controller of the SSD already does all kin= ds of things to emulate a harddisk, I'm not sure if it makes much sense to tune the filesystem's parameters much. As for softupdates (journaled of not): try it and let us know if you see differences, especially in write performance. :-) The FreeBSD foundation has awarded a grant to port a special Flash filesyst= em and tools to FreeBSD: http://freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com/2012/03/new-project-nand-flash-suppor= t.html It might be worthwhile to keep that in mind for the future.=20 What I would certainly recommend is that you make a daily automated backup (may I suggest calling rsync from cron at night?) of the SSD's filesystem to an actual HDD, just to be sure. Roland --=20 R.F.Smith http://rsmith.home.xs4all.nl/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725) --u3/rZRmxL6MmkK24 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAk/FD8wACgkQEnfvsMMhpyX1RQCfS7BBwzUUZSZGKOaJh4BDCEmP nk4AnRm5PpZKxq0a6wAS42osl0Cox7Wx =TWJj -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --u3/rZRmxL6MmkK24--