Re: [PLUG] SSD & HDD Partition Plan Suggestions

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 11:04 AM, Austin Murphy <austin.murphy@gmail.com> wrote:
> One exception is when writes are instructed to bypass the
> buffer cache and go directly to disk.  That's good for data integrity,
> but bad for performance.  An SSD will make it faster.

The recent ext3 flamewar certainly didn't help with this - lots of app
developers being told that fsync should be used anytime you write a
file (why even have a writeback cache in that case).

>
> I would also consider putting /var and /tmp on the SSD. Both should be
> pretty small.

I'd agree with /var since that data needs to be persistant, but I'd
recommend using a tmpfs for /tmp.  In the worst case it just swaps to
disk and is as slow as a disk, but in the best case it never touches
the disk.  You just need to avoid sticking stuff in /tmp that you care
about long-term, which FHS tells you not to do anyway.

Another post in this thread used tmpfs in a few places - some more
debatable than others.

Both /var and /tmp do carry the risk of more write wear, though not as
much as swap does.

Rich
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug