Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Alan Corey]

I finally looked at piclone source, it uses parted to do the partition
stuff, cp to do the actual copying, the GUI is GTK.  And it's written
in C with popens.  https://github.com/raspberrypi-ui/piclone or more
directly https://github.com/raspberrypi-ui/piclone/blob/master/src/piclone.c

On 7/14/17, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> On Thursday 13 July 2017 20:43:38 Alan Corey wrote:
>
>> I've got a 2' x 4' sheet of that stuff in the garage, brought it home
>> from the dump a few years ago, can't bring myself to cut into it.  But
>> good for cases and heat sinks.
>>
>> I guess the one feature request I'd have for Piclone is that it ignore
>> swap partitions, or have an option for more manual control.  Putting
>> swap in the middle like you did makes more sense.
>>
> piclone, from your description sounds like the cat's meow.  But the only
> time I actually got it to run, the pair of 32Gb cards I was using, one
> turned out to be a megabyte smaller, and of course it was the target
> card, so it crashed out, media full, and the copy wasn't usable. I
> haven't been able to even start it since, no permissions or some such
> silliness. I even removed it totally, then reinstalled it, still will
> not run because it cannot find any src to copy from, nor target to copy
> to. Its not worth a damn to me when it thinks its running in a medialess
> environment.
>
> What it needs is brains enough to both find the media, and to quit and
> clean up when it has copied say 200 megs past the end of the data,
> regardless of the capacity of the media.
>
> Etcher from the pine64 website looks about the same, and TBT I am
> considering pre-ordering a pair of the rock64's with 4Gb of memory,
> $44.95 each, which will start shipping the first of August. Its also
> claiming gigabit ethernet and usb3, and a sata adaptor that plugs into
> the usb3 port is a $10 bill.
>
> IOW, same  cpu, much better gpu, and apparently lots more I/O bandwidth.
>
>
> I haven't approached Bertho about it yet, but would send him one of them
> to play with if he thinks it would bypass some of the r-pi herpes sores.
>
> More below.
>
>> On 7/13/17, Gene Heskett  wrote:
>> > On Thursday 13 July 2017 16:59:45 Alan Corey wrote:
>> >> Well, no, until you boot from the hard drive you're just using the
>> >> SD card to work on the hard drive.  I'm not sure what automounting
>> >> is happening on your machine, I usually turn it off.  Booted from
>> >> the SD, do cd /mnt.  If that's an error you probably don't have
>> >> one, so do cd / then mkdir /mnt.
>> >>
>> >> Next you need to mount each of the 2 partitions on the hard drive
>> >> to work on.  First the DOS /boot partition
>> >> mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
>> >> then edit /mnt/boot/cmdline.txt which will become /boot/cmdline.txt
>> >> then umount /mnt (cd out of it first if you're in it)
>> >> and mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
>> >> and edit /mnt/etc/fstab which will become your real fstab
>> >> umount /mnt
>> >>
>> >> After that if you shut down and pull the SD it should boot from the
>> >> hard drive.  I've used my partition numbers because I don't know
>> >> what yours are.  Here sda1 is the DOS partition, sda2 is ext4, sda3
>> >> is swap.
>> >
>> > Whereas this drive is partitioned for /boot=sda1, swap=sda2, and
>> > /=sda3
>> >
>> > but that shouldn't make a huge diff.
>> >
>> > I should rsync those two partitions before I try this.  Since I
>> > won't have the material to mount a scale on the tailstock till next
>> > week late, I need some 1/4" alu sheet for that, this might "keep me
>> > out of the bars" :)  Thanks Alan.
>
> rsync made a mess ( ignored filesystem diffs and boundaries) I needed a
> big mop to clean up, so after the cleanup, I did a directory by
> directory copy with the old standby, a root session of mc.
>
> Cheers Alan, Gene Heskett
> --
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> Genes Web page 
>


-- 
-
No, I won't  call it "climate change", do you have a "reality problem"? - AB1JX
Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach

Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 13 July 2017 20:43:38 Alan Corey wrote:

> I've got a 2' x 4' sheet of that stuff in the garage, brought it home
> from the dump a few years ago, can't bring myself to cut into it.  But
> good for cases and heat sinks.
>
> I guess the one feature request I'd have for Piclone is that it ignore
> swap partitions, or have an option for more manual control.  Putting
> swap in the middle like you did makes more sense.
>
piclone, from your description sounds like the cat's meow.  But the only 
time I actually got it to run, the pair of 32Gb cards I was using, one 
turned out to be a megabyte smaller, and of course it was the target 
card, so it crashed out, media full, and the copy wasn't usable. I 
haven't been able to even start it since, no permissions or some such 
silliness. I even removed it totally, then reinstalled it, still will 
not run because it cannot find any src to copy from, nor target to copy 
to. Its not worth a damn to me when it thinks its running in a medialess 
environment.

What it needs is brains enough to both find the media, and to quit and 
clean up when it has copied say 200 megs past the end of the data, 
regardless of the capacity of the media.

Etcher from the pine64 website looks about the same, and TBT I am 
considering pre-ordering a pair of the rock64's with 4Gb of memory, 
$44.95 each, which will start shipping the first of August. Its also 
claiming gigabit ethernet and usb3, and a sata adaptor that plugs into 
the usb3 port is a $10 bill.

IOW, same  cpu, much better gpu, and apparently lots more I/O bandwidth.


I haven't approached Bertho about it yet, but would send him one of them 
to play with if he thinks it would bypass some of the r-pi herpes sores.

More below.

> On 7/13/17, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> > On Thursday 13 July 2017 16:59:45 Alan Corey wrote:
> >> Well, no, until you boot from the hard drive you're just using the
> >> SD card to work on the hard drive.  I'm not sure what automounting
> >> is happening on your machine, I usually turn it off.  Booted from
> >> the SD, do cd /mnt.  If that's an error you probably don't have
> >> one, so do cd / then mkdir /mnt.
> >>
> >> Next you need to mount each of the 2 partitions on the hard drive
> >> to work on.  First the DOS /boot partition
> >> mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
> >> then edit /mnt/boot/cmdline.txt which will become /boot/cmdline.txt
> >> then umount /mnt (cd out of it first if you're in it)
> >> and mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
> >> and edit /mnt/etc/fstab which will become your real fstab
> >> umount /mnt
> >>
> >> After that if you shut down and pull the SD it should boot from the
> >> hard drive.  I've used my partition numbers because I don't know
> >> what yours are.  Here sda1 is the DOS partition, sda2 is ext4, sda3
> >> is swap.
> >
> > Whereas this drive is partitioned for /boot=sda1, swap=sda2, and
> > /=sda3
> >
> > but that shouldn't make a huge diff.
> >
> > I should rsync those two partitions before I try this.  Since I
> > won't have the material to mount a scale on the tailstock till next
> > week late, I need some 1/4" alu sheet for that, this might "keep me
> > out of the bars" :)  Thanks Alan.

rsync made a mess ( ignored filesystem diffs and boundaries) I needed a 
big mop to clean up, so after the cleanup, I did a directory by 
directory copy with the old standby, a root session of mc.

Cheers Alan, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Alan Corey]

I've got a 2' x 4' sheet of that stuff in the garage, brought it home
from the dump a few years ago, can't bring myself to cut into it.  But
good for cases and heat sinks.

I guess the one feature request I'd have for Piclone is that it ignore
swap partitions, or have an option for more manual control.  Putting
swap in the middle like you did makes more sense.

On 7/13/17, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> On Thursday 13 July 2017 16:59:45 Alan Corey wrote:
>
>> Well, no, until you boot from the hard drive you're just using the SD
>> card to work on the hard drive.  I'm not sure what automounting is
>> happening on your machine, I usually turn it off.  Booted from the SD,
>> do cd /mnt.  If that's an error you probably don't have one, so do cd
>> / then mkdir /mnt.
>>
>> Next you need to mount each of the 2 partitions on the hard drive to
>> work on.  First the DOS /boot partition
>> mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
>> then edit /mnt/boot/cmdline.txt which will become /boot/cmdline.txt
>> then umount /mnt (cd out of it first if you're in it)
>> and mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
>> and edit /mnt/etc/fstab which will become your real fstab
>> umount /mnt
>>
>> After that if you shut down and pull the SD it should boot from the
>> hard drive.  I've used my partition numbers because I don't know what
>> yours are.  Here sda1 is the DOS partition, sda2 is ext4, sda3 is
>> swap.
>>
> Whereas this drive is partitioned for /boot=sda1, swap=sda2, and /=sda3
>
> but that shouldn't make a huge diff.
>
> I should rsync those two partitions before I try this.  Since I won't
> have the material to mount a scale on the tailstock till next week late,
> I need some 1/4" alu sheet for that, this might "keep me out of the
> bars" :)  Thanks Alan.
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> --
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> Genes Web page 
>


-- 
-
No, I won't  call it "climate change", do you have a "reality problem"? - AB1JX
Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach

Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 13 July 2017 16:59:45 Alan Corey wrote:

> Well, no, until you boot from the hard drive you're just using the SD
> card to work on the hard drive.  I'm not sure what automounting is
> happening on your machine, I usually turn it off.  Booted from the SD,
> do cd /mnt.  If that's an error you probably don't have one, so do cd
> / then mkdir /mnt.
>
> Next you need to mount each of the 2 partitions on the hard drive to
> work on.  First the DOS /boot partition
> mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
> then edit /mnt/boot/cmdline.txt which will become /boot/cmdline.txt
> then umount /mnt (cd out of it first if you're in it)
> and mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
> and edit /mnt/etc/fstab which will become your real fstab
> umount /mnt
>
> After that if you shut down and pull the SD it should boot from the
> hard drive.  I've used my partition numbers because I don't know what
> yours are.  Here sda1 is the DOS partition, sda2 is ext4, sda3 is
> swap.
>
Whereas this drive is partitioned for /boot=sda1, swap=sda2, and /=sda3

but that shouldn't make a huge diff.

I should rsync those two partitions before I try this.  Since I won't 
have the material to mount a scale on the tailstock till next week late, 
I need some 1/4" alu sheet for that, this might "keep me out of the 
bars" :)  Thanks Alan.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Alan Corey]

Well, no, until you boot from the hard drive you're just using the SD
card to work on the hard drive.  I'm not sure what automounting is
happening on your machine, I usually turn it off.  Booted from the SD,
do cd /mnt.  If that's an error you probably don't have one, so do cd
/ then mkdir /mnt.

Next you need to mount each of the 2 partitions on the hard drive to
work on.  First the DOS /boot partition
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
then edit /mnt/boot/cmdline.txt which will become /boot/cmdline.txt
then umount /mnt (cd out of it first if you're in it)
and mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
and edit /mnt/etc/fstab which will become your real fstab
umount /mnt

After that if you shut down and pull the SD it should boot from the
hard drive.  I've used my partition numbers because I don't know what
yours are.  Here sda1 is the DOS partition, sda2 is ext4, sda3 is
swap.

On 7/13/17, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> On Thursday 13 July 2017 12:52:51 Alan Corey wrote:
>
>> Try touch /var/swap so one exists?  Actually I think you're supposed
>> to dd a few gigs from /dev/zero in there.  I just left the swap file
>> alone, the reason being that my swap partition is on the end of the
>> drive which is going to cause head thrashing if it gets used a lot.
>> So some swap space near where everything else is is good.
>>
>> Does your /boot/cmdline.txt still refer to the SD card?
>
> The one on the sd card does not.
>
>> Mine now says
>> root=/dev/sda2 The one on the hard drive that is.
>>
>> On 7/13/17, Gene Heskett  wrote:
>> > On Thursday 13 July 2017 12:00:43 Alan Corey wrote:
>> >> Mine looks like:
>> >>
>> >> proc/proc   procdefaults  0   0
>> >> /dev/sda1  /boot   vfatdefaults  0   2
>> >> /dev/sda2  /   ext4defaults,noatime  0   1
>> >> /dev/sda3 none swap sw 0 0
>> >
>> > Reading the manpage, I used:
>> > /dev/sda2 none swap sw,defaults
>> > And after a reboot, htop shows swap at 2099 megs. That includes the
>> > 100 meg swapFILE in /var. To turn that off:
>> > sudo dphys-swapfile swapoff
>> > or sudo dphys-swapfile swapon
>> >
>> > I just turned it off. That I think can be put into /etc/rc.local as
>> > it runs as root.  But I can't make that work, without or with a sudo
>> > in front of it. So where can I put it?.
>> >
>> > I turned it off, then removed /var/swap. Won't reboot. WTH? THere
>> > isn't anything in fstab but what I added, and nothing in
>> > /boot/config.txt or cmdline.txt about swap. I can recover, but the
>> > most recent edits in the linuxcnc tree haven't been backed up,
>> > damn! I'll try a full powerdown before I swap cards to begin the
>> > recovery.
>> >
>> >> And when you reboot you should see it in top as an increase in
>> >> swap.
>> >>
>> >> The only downside I've found is that piclone doesn't know to ignore
>> >> it.  I put mine at the end of 320 GB, now I can't use piclone for
>> >> backups to SD anymore.  But there's been discussion that swap will
>> >> wear out an SD fast, they're rated by read/write cyccles.
>> >
>> > Eggzakly. :)
>> >
>> > Thanks Alan.
>> >
>> >
>> > Cheers, Gene Heskett
>> > --
>> > "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>> >  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
>> > -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
>> > Genes Web page 
>
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> --
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> +-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> Genes Web page 
>


-- 
-
No, I won't  call it "climate change", do you have a "reality problem"? - AB1JX
Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach

Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 13 July 2017 12:52:51 Alan Corey wrote:

> Try touch /var/swap so one exists?  Actually I think you're supposed
> to dd a few gigs from /dev/zero in there.  I just left the swap file
> alone, the reason being that my swap partition is on the end of the
> drive which is going to cause head thrashing if it gets used a lot.
> So some swap space near where everything else is is good.
>
> Does your /boot/cmdline.txt still refer to the SD card?

The one on the sd card does not.

> Mine now says 
> root=/dev/sda2 The one on the hard drive that is.
>
> On 7/13/17, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> > On Thursday 13 July 2017 12:00:43 Alan Corey wrote:
> >> Mine looks like:
> >>
> >> proc/proc   procdefaults  0   0
> >> /dev/sda1  /boot   vfatdefaults  0   2
> >> /dev/sda2  /   ext4defaults,noatime  0   1
> >> /dev/sda3 none swap sw 0 0
> >
> > Reading the manpage, I used:
> > /dev/sda2 none swap sw,defaults
> > And after a reboot, htop shows swap at 2099 megs. That includes the
> > 100 meg swapFILE in /var. To turn that off:
> > sudo dphys-swapfile swapoff
> > or sudo dphys-swapfile swapon
> >
> > I just turned it off. That I think can be put into /etc/rc.local as
> > it runs as root.  But I can't make that work, without or with a sudo
> > in front of it. So where can I put it?.
> >
> > I turned it off, then removed /var/swap. Won't reboot. WTH? THere
> > isn't anything in fstab but what I added, and nothing in
> > /boot/config.txt or cmdline.txt about swap. I can recover, but the
> > most recent edits in the linuxcnc tree haven't been backed up,
> > damn! I'll try a full powerdown before I swap cards to begin the
> > recovery.
> >
> >> And when you reboot you should see it in top as an increase in
> >> swap.
> >>
> >> The only downside I've found is that piclone doesn't know to ignore
> >> it.  I put mine at the end of 320 GB, now I can't use piclone for
> >> backups to SD anymore.  But there's been discussion that swap will
> >> wear out an SD fast, they're rated by read/write cyccles.
> >
> > Eggzakly. :)
> >
> > Thanks Alan.
> >
> >
> > Cheers, Gene Heskett
> > --
> > "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
> >  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> > -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> > Genes Web page 


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
+-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 13 July 2017 12:34:15 Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:

> On 13/07/17 16:15, Alan Corey wrote:
> > Mine looks like:
>
> etc. Yes, agreed. You might also need to tell it to stop using a file
> on the normal filesystem as swap- to be honest I can't remember how to
> do that.
>
> It's worth remembering that  swapon -s  will tell you what partitions
> and files are being used.
>
> But the bottom line is that the RPi is trying to push all I/O through
> limited bandwidth, and if you want decent performance it's probably
> not the best board to use.

I keep seeing a pine-something, with 2x the memory, but haven't tripped 
over its price, or whether or not hm2-rpspi.so will work with its gpio.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 13 July 2017 12:15:41 Alan Corey wrote:

> But I did use piclone to copy my SD to the hard drive.  After you copy
> you have to mount  the hard drive partitions and manually change your
> /etc/fstab.  Also in /boot/cmdline.txt tell it that root is on
> /dev/sda2 or whatever.  Worked really slick, the partition size got
> expanded automatically and everything.
>
Turned out it, as usual, needed a full powerdown reset, then it was fine.

Just for S&G I ran that command to enable the swap file, and it created a 
new 104 meg swap file in /var.

Then some honeydo's got into the schedule, so I've not gone back to 
retest.

However, it did update the linuxcnc kit as a test to see if rotating swap 
helped, but I only saw the led on the drive dim once, and it took about 
20 minutes to unpack and install the new linuxcnc-uspace, like there's a 
5 kilobyte a minute bottleneck someplace.

When I get a chance, I will seriously load it up to where it has to use 
swap. I never saw anything but zero in the htop report while it was 
installing a fresh version of linuxcnc. It spent a good 10+ minutes with 
the progress bar stuck at 47%, and the deb is less than 15 megabytes.

Now I've more honeydo's, its a physical therapy day for the better half.

Take care, Alan.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Diego Roversi]

On Thu, 13 Jul 2017 12:38:57 -0400
Gene Heskett  wrote:

> I turned it off, then removed /var/swap. Won't reboot. WTH? THere isn't 
> anything in fstab but what I added, and nothing in /boot/config.txt or 
> cmdline.txt about swap. I can recover, but the most recent edits in the 
> linuxcnc tree haven't been backed up, damn! I'll try a full 
> powerdown before I swap cards to begin the recovery.

If you need to recreate a swap file, you can follow this step as root user:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/swap bs=$((1024*1024)) count=100 # 100MiB swap file
mkswap /var/swap

(supposing that /var/swap was a file used for swap)

For activate it:

swapon /var/swap

For checking swap usage, you can:

cat /proc/swaps

If you need to make some more ram available, and you don't want to use swap, 
you can use zram:

https://wiki.debian.org/ZRam

Regards.

-- 
Diego Roversi 

Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Alan Corey]

Try touch /var/swap so one exists?  Actually I think you're supposed
to dd a few gigs from /dev/zero in there.  I just left the swap file
alone, the reason being that my swap partition is on the end of the
drive which is going to cause head thrashing if it gets used a lot.
So some swap space near where everything else is is good.

Does your /boot/cmdline.txt still refer to the SD card?  Mine now says
root=/dev/sda2 The one on the hard drive that is.

On 7/13/17, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> On Thursday 13 July 2017 12:00:43 Alan Corey wrote:
>
>> Mine looks like:
>>
>> proc/proc   procdefaults  0   0
>> /dev/sda1  /boot   vfatdefaults  0   2
>> /dev/sda2  /   ext4defaults,noatime  0   1
>> /dev/sda3 none swap sw 0 0
>>
> Reading the manpage, I used:
> /dev/sda2 none swap sw,defaults
> And after a reboot, htop shows swap at 2099 megs. That includes the 100
> meg swapFILE in /var. To turn that off:
> sudo dphys-swapfile swapoff
> or sudo dphys-swapfile swapon
>
> I just turned it off. That I think can be put into /etc/rc.local as it
> runs as root.  But I can't make that work, without or with a sudo in
> front of it. So where can I put it?.
>
> I turned it off, then removed /var/swap. Won't reboot. WTH? THere isn't
> anything in fstab but what I added, and nothing in /boot/config.txt or
> cmdline.txt about swap. I can recover, but the most recent edits in the
> linuxcnc tree haven't been backed up, damn! I'll try a full
> powerdown before I swap cards to begin the recovery.
>
>> And when you reboot you should see it in top as an increase in swap.
>>
>> The only downside I've found is that piclone doesn't know to ignore
>> it.  I put mine at the end of 320 GB, now I can't use piclone for
>> backups to SD anymore.  But there's been discussion that swap will
>> wear out an SD fast, they're rated by read/write cyccles.
>
> Eggzakly. :)
>
> Thanks Alan.
>
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> --
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> Genes Web page 
>


-- 
-
No, I won't  call it "climate change", do you have a "reality problem"? - AB1JX
Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach

Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 13 July 2017 12:00:43 Alan Corey wrote:

> Mine looks like:
>
> proc/proc   procdefaults  0   0
> /dev/sda1  /boot   vfatdefaults  0   2
> /dev/sda2  /   ext4defaults,noatime  0   1
> /dev/sda3 none swap sw 0 0
>
Reading the manpage, I used:
/dev/sda2 none swap sw,defaults
And after a reboot, htop shows swap at 2099 megs. That includes the 100 
meg swapFILE in /var. To turn that off:
sudo dphys-swapfile swapoff
or sudo dphys-swapfile swapon

I just turned it off. That I think can be put into /etc/rc.local as it 
runs as root.  But I can't make that work, without or with a sudo in 
front of it. So where can I put it?.

I turned it off, then removed /var/swap. Won't reboot. WTH? THere isn't 
anything in fstab but what I added, and nothing in /boot/config.txt or 
cmdline.txt about swap. I can recover, but the most recent edits in the 
linuxcnc tree haven't been backed up, damn! I'll try a full 
powerdown before I swap cards to begin the recovery.

> And when you reboot you should see it in top as an increase in swap.
>
> The only downside I've found is that piclone doesn't know to ignore
> it.  I put mine at the end of 320 GB, now I can't use piclone for
> backups to SD anymore.  But there's been discussion that swap will
> wear out an SD fast, they're rated by read/write cyccles.

Eggzakly. :)

Thanks Alan.


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

On 13/07/17 16:15, Alan Corey wrote:

Mine looks like:


etc. Yes, agreed. You might also need to tell it to stop using a file on 
the normal filesystem as swap- to be honest I can't remember how to do that.


It's worth remembering that  swapon -s  will tell you what partitions 
and files are being used.


But the bottom line is that the RPi is trying to push all I/O through 
limited bandwidth, and if you want decent performance it's probably not 
the best board to use.


--
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]

Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Alan Corey]

But I did use piclone to copy my SD to the hard drive.  After you copy
you have to mount  the hard drive partitions and manually change your
/etc/fstab.  Also in /boot/cmdline.txt tell it that root is on
/dev/sda2 or whatever.  Worked really slick, the partition size got
expanded automatically and everything.

On 7/13/17, Alan Corey  wrote:
> Mine looks like:
>
> proc/proc   procdefaults  0   0
> /dev/sda1  /boot   vfatdefaults  0   2
> /dev/sda2  /   ext4defaults,noatime  0   1
> /dev/sda3 none swap sw 0 0
>
> And when you reboot you should see it in top as an increase in swap.
>
> The only downside I've found is that piclone doesn't know to ignore
> it.  I put mine at the end of 320 GB, now I can't use piclone for
> backups to SD anymore.  But there's been discussion that swap will
> wear out an SD fast, they're rated by read/write cyccles.
>
> On 7/13/17, Gene Heskett  wrote:
>> Greetings all;
>>
>> I have a terabyte drive plugged into a usb port on a pi-3b.
>> It has a swap partition of 2Gb allocated.
>>
>> I would like to edit fstab and put swap on this rotating media.
>>
>> I feel that with the pi's limited memory, this would be a noticeable
>> speedup, when apt is doing updates in particular. I've had 200 megs of
>> updates take over an hour to complete.
>>
>> How is this accomplished?
>>
>> Cheers, Gene Heskett
>> --
>> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
>> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
>> Genes Web page 
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> -
> No, I won't  call it "climate change", do you have a "reality problem"? -
> AB1JX
> Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach
>


-- 
-
No, I won't  call it "climate change", do you have a "reality problem"? - AB1JX
Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach

Re: pi vs swap on flash

[Alan Corey]

Mine looks like:

proc/proc   procdefaults  0   0
/dev/sda1  /boot   vfatdefaults  0   2
/dev/sda2  /   ext4defaults,noatime  0   1
/dev/sda3 none swap sw 0 0

And when you reboot you should see it in top as an increase in swap.

The only downside I've found is that piclone doesn't know to ignore
it.  I put mine at the end of 320 GB, now I can't use piclone for
backups to SD anymore.  But there's been discussion that swap will
wear out an SD fast, they're rated by read/write cyccles.

On 7/13/17, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> Greetings all;
>
> I have a terabyte drive plugged into a usb port on a pi-3b.
> It has a swap partition of 2Gb allocated.
>
> I would like to edit fstab and put swap on this rotating media.
>
> I feel that with the pi's limited memory, this would be a noticeable
> speedup, when apt is doing updates in particular. I've had 200 megs of
> updates take over an hour to complete.
>
> How is this accomplished?
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> --
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
> Genes Web page 
>
>


-- 
-
No, I won't  call it "climate change", do you have a "reality problem"? - AB1JX
Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach  Impeach