Well, this is good info, and we need to expand it or be more detailed when possible.

For new people to linux.

1. Not choosing a journalising file system means that when the installer of whatever linux distro (Ubuntu, Fedora, whatever) asks you for file system, you should choose something like ext2. Ext2 would be highly recommended in this situation.
2. When the installer asks you if you want it to setup partitions for you, say no, and just create a data partition to mount "/", and don't create a swap partition.
3. I don't remember where fstab is (I think it is under /etc/ but if it isn't please someone correct this).
4. I have no clue (sorry, never really use those, I have used linux for a long time, but only as a desktop user) of how to setup the system for it not to log errors... Can someone explain this? Once this is all done, we could add this to the wiki :-)

How come no swap, most distros will not let you install without one. Will they?

Even if they don't let you install without swap, you can always turn it off afterwards.

Because SSD uses flash mem, which (short, technically incorrect but "you get the idea" answer) because of the way it saves information, it wears down each time it writes something. Flash has (depending on quality) from 10,000 write cycles (meaning you can write the entire memory 10,000 times) and up. If you have swap, you will be writing all the time, and thus you will be wearing your SSD much faster. Actually, the Xandros version that the EEE uses comes without swap.

Same goes for journaling filesystems, they write more often, so that's why it is suggested not to use it.

Yes, windows will do that. I haven't used Windows in a long time, but I think that under system settings you could turn off the pager file (which would have the same bad effect as the linux swap on the SSD). And yes, it means exactly that. The lifespan of an EEE will be lower. This has already been discussed in the forums several times (I actually opened a thread a long time ago wondering whether the SSD would be repleceable).

For the moment, you can safely assume that under normal usage it should last at least 3 years, and if it does die, you can always put an SD card and use it instead... But yes, the fact is that SSDs lifespan is way shorter than that of regular notebooks...

Well, 3 years is not much, I agree... that's why I had opened a thread regarding that topic a long time ago... But there's no way around it really, it's a hardware issue... SSDs are that way, and we have to live with that. Although on the rational side, it is true that three years from now we will all probably have changed the EEE for whatever replaces it in the near future...

To answer your other questions:
1. Yes, the Default Xandros is configured in a way that it will help maintain the flash drive longer. For example, it comes using the ext2 filesystem which has no journalising, so it makes less writes to the drive.
2. Yes, it is a fact that it has no swap. Not sure where I read that, but somebody posted the contents of the fstab file, which showed no swap partition.
3. Not all hardware units use flash. They do last longer than 3 years, but because you make much less writes in those systems that in a hard drive with a full OS. Think about it, you are not constantly adding and adding contacts to your cell phone, nor adding, deleting and then adding and adding each day more games, etc... You pretty much add things every once in a while, and there comes a point where you pretty much don't add new things. Flash devices wear down as you write. You can read as many times as you want.

OK.... we kind of went OT... please keep replies to suggestions. Questions can be answered by linux gurus in a different thread. This thread is designed to be a list of warnings and considerations... please keep it that way. WINDOWS queries do not belong in a Linux thread!

[/OT]

Mounting /var/log/ as a tmpfs will reduce the amount of writes used by logging, however it is highly advised that you modify the shutdown scripts to copy the logs to a safe before turning off, so you don't lose them permanently (they are useful!!!). There is no generic way to do this as different systems use different init daemons... but it would be best to start looking at /etc/inittab and see what script is called for shutdown. That should give you an idea of where to put the extra commands. (NOTE: If you upgrade systems, i.e. upgrading Ubuntu Feisty -> Gutsy, your changes will most likely not survive... you will need to make them again after the upgrade is complete)

As of writing the Atheros driver supplied with the Xandros OS is a closed-source binary-blob driver. This means that it will probably not work with kernels of different versions... and may not even run with kernels of the same version. Unfortunately there is not open-source native driver for linux (although madwifi is awfully close to a solution for the ar5007eg). Instead you will require ndiswrapper and a copy of the original XP driver for this card. ndiswrapper is usually available in the Distributions software package repositories and the XP driver can be procured from the Asus support website, or the restore DVD that came with the Eee.

*** Patrick, can you add these points to the original post. Thanks.

Add this line to /etc/fstab

tmpfs        /var/log        tmpfs        defaults        0   0

As for "where" to place the copy-replace-logs modifications... my guess would be something like the following

Create the startup/shutdown script for backing up the logs (create a new file using "sudo nano /etc/init.d/logbak

#!/bin/bash

case "$1" in
    stop)
        mv -Rp /var/log/* /backup_logs/
        ;;
    start)
    mv -Rp /backup_logs/* /var/log/
    ;;
    *)
        echo 'Usage: /etc/init.d/console-setup {start||stop}'
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

Now create /backup_logs

sudo mkdir /backup_logs

Now put the scripts in the right places

ln -s /etc/init.d/logbak /etc/rcS.d/S02logbak.sh
ln -s /etc/init.d/logbak /etc/rc0.d/S02logbak.sh

Ben, if you read this can you decipher it with your Debian genius and tell me if it is correct? Thanks.

One thing to keep in mind is that to Linux, there is no difference between a hard drive (or SSD in this case) and a USB pen drive.  Both appear as block devices.

You could, get a cheap, disposable pen drive.  Drop 2 partitions on it. Format one as swap and one as ext2 add the appropriate lines to fstab.

Such as:

/dev/sda1  swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda2 /var/log ext2 defaults 0 0

Obviously pulling the pen drive out whilst the laptop is still going would cause a kernel panic and kill it dead; but if you must have swap/logging it's viable.  Messy, but viable.

Hey I've got an Idea I wanted to use both linux and windows. so I've been thinking about this and there really isn't enough room to install a dual boot by any means. so what I've concluded is that I will get two SD cards and install my OS's to the SD cards then on the SSD memory keep my data. so I can switch from windows to linux with a quick reboot. and the data that I'm working on stays on the computer in the SSD memory. But I haven't tried this yet. its all speculation. SD cards are cheep if they die after three years I could care less.

Last edited by whitespace (2007-11-03 7:01:06 pm)

One thing not mentioned here is that you can setup a swap file on Linux, rather than a swap partition. This is actually a piece of cake. Create an empty file of appropriate size using dd and then use the swapon command to utilise it.

So it should be possible to create a script that did this on each boot up (first deleting the old swap file, of course). This way the swap file would never be in the same position on the disk (ie it wouldn't be a permanent file hammered by the OS), which I believe is the thing people here are worried about.

My experience is that the swap file rarely gets written to anyway if you're sensible with your usage and don't have more than 1/2 apps working at the same time.

Last edited by rs-px (2007-11-07 7:50:23 am)

Disabling any kind of caching (or certainly cutting down on it) should be the first port of call.

What programs other than browsers are likely to maintain a cache?