Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
> Do you know any resource where I can find the steps on how to install > on JFFS2? In http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~monnier/gnu-linux/debian-live-usb I outlined the steps I took to create my "Debian on flash" rescue key. It would probably need a little bit of updating, but the core part should work just as before. Stefan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
On Tuesday 2009 January 27 19:11:45 Kushal Koolwal wrote: >> Probably the best r/w filesystem for flash based devices in JFFS2. > >I don't recollect an option of formatting the FS as JFFS2 in the Debian > Lenny Installation CD? Nope, but it is possible take an existing filesystem and build a JFFS2 image with the same contents. >>Live is exactly what you want, but it can't be a direct conversion of a >> Live CD, since they generally use a r/o squashfs, for the compression. > >Exactly! Glad you spoke about squashfs. I really don't want to use those > things - squashfs, unionfs and all that. I really would like to keep it as > simple as it can be - just like installing on a PATA Hard disk. Well, it's probably not going to be that simple, you'll definitely need to fixup the kernel command line in menu.lst, if nothing else. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. b...@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
On Jan 28, 2009, at 2:08 PM, Kushal Koolwal wrote:
Hi Rick,
If you will, it's doing the JFFS2 thing for you -- you don't need
the software in the kernel to do it a second time.
Do you know any resource where I can find the steps on how to
install on JFFS2?
Also I was wondering if all this what we discussed regarding ext2
(noatime or relatime option) on USB flash drive holds true for USB
hard drives also?
AFAIU USB hard drives are exactly like IDE hard drives with just an
USB interface. I am assuming that just having ext3 would be fine
for USB hard drives?
Thanks
I do blog at http://blogs.koolwal.net/
USB hard drives don't have the problem that flash drives do. They
are just IDE hard drives with a USB to IDE adapter, so you can write
to the same block as many times as you like and not wear it out.
In case it's not clear, the problem with using flash (whether USB or
CF) is that the individual transistors used to store the bits wear
out after a limited number of writes. That number is variously
reported as being as low as 10,000, or as much as 1,000,000 writes
per transistor. It's been improving over time as the technology
matures, and recent thumb drives are also larger, so a 16GB thumb
drive is probably good for several million writes spread out across
the entire device, assuming the adaptation layer in the drive is
doing its job.
If you're using CF instead of USB drives, you don't have the USB
adaptation layer to spread out the writes. So JFFS2, or something
like it, will be desirable for them. But outside of the embedded
computing world, using CF directly without an intervening adapter is
rare.
I can't help you with a HOW-TO for installing to JFFS2. But I
understand there is an "embedded Debian" mailing list ("Embeddian"?
maybe).
Rick
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Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Kushal Koolwal wrote: > Also I was wondering if all this what we discussed regarding ext2 > (noatime or relatime option) on USB flash drive holds true for USB > hard drives also? AFAIU USB hard drives are exactly like IDE hard > drives with just an USB interface. Yes. > I am assuming that just having > ext3 would be fine for USB hard drives? Yes, I use ext3 on all my external usb and internal hard drives. I don't use noatime or relatime on them. Cheers, Johannes -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkmAuKkACgkQC1NzPRl9qEWHVQCfX6p2P4aDsfno1vEvZa1gu69S ncsAnRMJ5NOu2npUzaeGYeNC6xKX1hZ0 =AjvL -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
RE: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
Hi Rick, > If you will, it's doing the JFFS2 thing for you -- you don't need the > software in the kernel to do it a second time. Do you know any resource where I can find the steps on how to install on JFFS2? Also I was wondering if all this what we discussed regarding ext2 (noatime or relatime option) on USB flash drive holds true for USB hard drives also? AFAIU USB hard drives are exactly like IDE hard drives with just an USB interface. I am assuming that just having ext3 would be fine for USB hard drives? Thanks I do blog at http://blogs.koolwal.net/ _ Windows Live™ Hotmail®…more than just e-mail. http://windowslive.com/howitworks?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t2_hm_justgotbetter_howitworks_012009 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
On Jan 27, 2009, at 8:11 PM, Kushal Koolwal wrote: Probably the best r/w filesystem for flash based devices in JFFS2. I don't recollect an option of formatting the FS as JFFS2 in the Debian Lenny Installation CD? JFFS2 isn't for USB Flash "thumb drives". It's for the kind of raw flash devices used in embedded systems. The thumb drive will have a "adaptation layer" of software and buffering, inside the drive, that attempts to spread the writes around so as to have level wear on all blocks. If you will, it's doing the JFFS2 thing for you -- you don't need the software in the kernel to do it a second time. The best recommendation is to use ext2 and either the "noatime" or "relatime" mount option. "relatime" will try to give you a relative idea, at very low cost in write cycles, of which files have been accessed how recently. "noatime" will not provide any information on access time, at zero cost in write cycles. hope this helps... Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
> Something to consider is: do you want swap on your flash drive or not? Depends on your use case. In general, I'd say you probably do want some amount of swap, tho you'll probably want to set your swappinness such that the swap space is used sparingly, since it's not a fast drive. > Don't you need swap in order to suspend? I did hit a bug at some point that prevents s2ram to work in the absence of swap, but usually swap is not needed for suspend. It is needed for hibernate, tho. Another relevant issue is that Linux generally considers USB devices as hotpluggable and likes to think that when you suspend all the USB devices get disconnected (and the reconnected upon resume), so it'll probably fail to suspend when / is mounted from USB. For that you'll have to play with the `persist' flag in the /sys filesystem IIUC. Stefan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
>>> AFAIK, a live usb system would not allow me to write data >>> persistently just like a live CD. > How did you get this idea? Read [2]. While it does allow it, it does not allow it in quite the same way as a normal Debian system. E.g. it is not meant to be used day-in/day-out and upgraded from release to release via apt-get. It can probably be made to work, of course. >> If you want it to act like a hard drive, put a "hard drive fs" on it: ext3. > ... or ext2 if you don't want a journal and reduce the r/w load of the > device [1]: >> ext2 is still recommended over journaling file systems on bootable >> USB flash drives and other solid-state drives. ext2 performs fewer >> writes than ext3 since it does not need to write to the journal. I wouldn't worry about it nearly as much as the risk of data loss or the burden of fsck'ing. If you care about performance, then choose your FS accordingly, but in terms of "wear out", there is very little evidence that it's a problem that should be taken seriously nowadays (especially given that a journal is actually an efficient structure on flash). Stefan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
>> Does anybody have any experience with installing Debian (say Lenny) on USB >> flash drives? I have a small Debian system installed on my flash key. It's basically a rescue system, but is just a "normal" Debian testing, which I have been upgrading every once in a while with apt-get. >> I would like to install Debian on my PQI 4 GB USB flash drive >> but I am not sure which filesystem to use - ext2, ext3, XFS? > Probably the best r/w filesystem for flash based devices in JFFS2. My system does use JFFS2 indeed, but no it's very far from being the best choice for a flash drive: I only use it because I needed compression and JFFS2 is the only compressing filesystem provided with Linux. The problem is not that JFFS2 is bad, but that it is designed for MTD devices, i.e. for access to the actual flash chips. In contrast, USB flash drives do not let the computer access the flash chips directly, forcing the use of a traditional block device emulation (which does wear-levelling and things like that). So my "JFFS2 on USB flash" system is basically working as follows: flash chips -> block emulation -> MTD emulation -> JFFS2. >> My primary concern/criteria in selecting a fs would be >> throughput/performance. > JFFS2 should do fairly well there, You'd think so, indeed, but it's actually rather inefficient. > Live is exactly what you want, No it's not. You just a plain old normal Debian install. The only tricky part of it is to make sure that your initrd properly handles USB, and also to make sure you use UUID or LABEL to mout your drive since the drive name will depend on too many factors. Stefan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Kushal Koolwal wrote: > Hi, > > Does anybody have any experience with installing Debian (say Lenny) on USB > flash drives? I would like to install Debian on my PQI 4 GB USB flash drive > but I am not sure which filesystem to use - ext2, ext3, XFS? I just grabbed a 4G USB and did my standard home install on it. I think I went with ext3, but after reading the rest of this thread, may change that. Some issues that I came across: I got confused during one installation and accidentally installed grub on my internal harddrive rather than the flash drive. Since this is a work laptop with an encrypted harddrive, wiping out the boot parittion made the primary system unbootable and had to reinstall that. Whoops. With my upgraded laptop, boot order changed from the time I booted from the install CD to to when I boot from the flash drive. I had to end up tweaking grub to point to the correct partition. I have some typical laptop issues that I think are not related to USB: had to install wired because I have to use non-free firmware to get wireless working, and since I run with /home mounted via NFS. Regularly my system tries to load the automount maps before wireless is up; I end up logging in as root once to reload them before logging in as my real user. Something to consider is: do you want swap on your flash drive or not? Don't you need swap in order to suspend? That could possibly speed up subsequent boot times. Personally I've not had success with suspend, but I can't remember right now if I set up swap on the flash drive or not. The biggest problem I have is, generally I'm using the flash in my laptop, and it sticks out quite a bit. I suspect I'll break it before I wear out the write cycles. If I ever come across the right CF or whatever media for a decent price, I might go ahead and purchase that, just so it's more internal the the system. The second biggest problem is the stupid thing flashes this bright blue light every once in a while, which is really annoying when the SO is trying to go to sleep. So, I'm running a laptop off of USB flash with /home mounted over NFS. It's not going to win any performance benchmarks, but I'm satisfied with it. mrc -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
RE: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
> Probably the best r/w filesystem for flash based devices in JFFS2. I don't recollect an option of formatting the FS as JFFS2 in the Debian Lenny Installation CD? >Live is exactly what you want, but it can't be a direct conversion of a Live >CD, since they generally use a r/o squashfs, for the compression. Exactly! Glad you spoke about squashfs. I really don't want to use those things - squashfs, unionfs and all that. I really would like to keep it as simple as it can be - just like installing on a PATA Hard disk. And that's what I wanted to find out here if there is anyone who has installed Debian on USB Flash device (w/o using squashfs) and on what FS did they installed. Elijah, glad to know that you have tried this before and you had no issues. I do blog at http://blogs.koolwal.net/ _ Windows Live™ Hotmail®:…more than just e-mail. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t2_hm_justgotbetter_explore_012009 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
On Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:15:15 -0800 Kushal Koolwal wrote: ... > Finally if anybody has followed any particular tutorial to create a Debian > Live USB flash drive, can you point that out? Otherwise I will just do a wild > search and pick one of them. http://debian-live.alioth.debian.org/ http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/Howto/USB Celejar -- mailmin.sourceforge.net - remote access via secure (OpenPGP) email ssuds.sourceforge.net - A Simple Sudoku Solver and Generator -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
elijah rutschman wrote: > I've done something like this and it worked pretty well with etch-and-a-half several months ago. I just used ext2 as the filesystem for simplicity and haven't had any issues thus far. I have heard that flash storage these days sustains enough write cycles to outlive the average hard drive. I have no science to back this claim up, but since flash drives are relatively cheap these days, I haven't been overly concerned about it. I have been hearing the same thing about flash, but---how do you know which kind of flash chips were used in your device? Old, or new? You may wish to use Compact Flash for speed. It uses the IDE PATA interface. Someone correct me if I am wrong. You may wish to use several devices. One for boot/root, one for swap, and one for /home. Speaking of device wear, ext3 and other journaled file systems do lots more reading and writing. ext2 may be moderately less wearing on the device. Mark Allums -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
RE: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
>Ie. you want to write 'data' to it as opposed to install debian to it. Both. Sorry for the confusion. I would like to install Debian on USB Flash drive and also read/write data (store files,etc.) just like a hard drive. > How did you get this idea? Read [2]. Thanks for the link and clearing my misconception. For some reasons I thought Live CD = Live USB (except it is on USB media). > IIRC, it's also recommended to use the noatime option to mount to >reduce the writes even more and prolong the life of the flash drive. Thanks Nate for this tip. Finally if anybody has followed any particular tutorial to create a Debian Live USB flash drive, can you point that out? Otherwise I will just do a wild search and pick one of them. I do blog at http://blogs.koolwal.net/ _ Windows Live™ Hotmail®…more than just e-mail. http://windowslive.com/howitworks?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t2_hm_justgotbetter_howitworks_012009 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Kushal Koolwal wrote: > Does anybody have any experience with installing Debian (say Lenny) on USB > flash drives? I would like to install Debian on my PQI 4 GB USB flash drive > but I am not sure which filesystem to use - ext2, ext3, XFS? I've done something like this and it worked pretty well with etch-and-a-half several months ago. I just used ext2 as the filesystem for simplicity and haven't had any issues thus far. I have heard that flash storage these days sustains enough write cycles to outlive the average hard drive. I have no science to back this claim up, but since flash drives are relatively cheap these days, I haven't been overly concerned about it. As for installing to and booting from a usb device, you may have to add usb_core to the modules loaded by your initrd if your initrd complains of being unable to find the root device. Regards, Elijah -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
On Tuesday 2009 January 27 13:07:55 Kushal Koolwal wrote: >Does anybody have any experience with installing Debian (say Lenny) on USB > flash drives? Not yet. I am interested in carrying around a Debian installation in the future though. > I would like to install Debian on my PQI 4 GB USB flash drive > but I am not sure which filesystem to use - ext2, ext3, XFS? Probably the best r/w filesystem for flash based devices in JFFS2. >My primary concern/criteria in selecting a fs would be > throughput/performance. JFFS2 should do fairly well there, although I haven't seen any good benchmarks. >I am tried searching around the internet but most of the articles talk about > preparing a LIVE USB flash drive which is *not* what I would like to do. I > just want a plain Debian system on my USB flash drive just like on any IDE > Hard Drive. Live is exactly what you want, but it can't be a direct conversion of a Live CD, since they generally use a r/o squashfs, for the compression. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. b...@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
* Johannes Wiedersich [2009 Jan 27 16:25 -0600]: > ... or ext2 if you don't want a journal and reduce the r/w load of the > device [1]: > > > ext2 is still recommended over journaling file systems on bootable > > USB flash drives and other solid-state drives. ext2 performs fewer > > writes than ext3 since it does not need to write to the journal. IIRC, it's also recommended to use the noatime option to mount to reduce the writes even more and prolong the life of the flash drive. While I wouldn't recommend it for daily use due to its model of always running as the root user, I chose to install Puppy Linux to a flash drive and it works well. - Nate >> -- "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true." Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://n0nb.us/index.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Ron Johnson wrote: > On 01/27/2009 03:13 PM, Kushal Koolwal wrote: >> I would like to use my USB device for reading and writing to the >> drive just as we do on a regular IDE hard drive. Ie. you want to write 'data' to it as opposed to install debian to it. >> AFAIK, a live usb system would not allow me to write data >> persistently just like a live CD. How did you get this idea? Read [2]. >> Also my original question was for a recommendation of FS for >> installing Debian on a USB flash drive. > > If you want it to act like a hard drive, put a "hard drive fs" on it: > ext3. ... or ext2 if you don't want a journal and reduce the r/w load of the device [1]: > ext2 is still recommended over journaling file systems on bootable > USB flash drives and other solid-state drives. ext2 performs fewer > writes than ext3 since it does not need to write to the journal. Cheers, Johannes [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext2 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_USB -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkl/iQAACgkQC1NzPRl9qEV4rQCcCTIhjDt47k95eCyTqRXUbn+l q9IAn3q12CWw8ZHxNVcM0F6B6qYvx/UT =nlX9 -END PGP SIGNATURE- signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
On 01/27/2009 03:13 PM, Kushal Koolwal wrote: What is the difference? What difference do you want to achieve with respect to a 'live' debian system? I would like to use my USB device for reading and writing to the drive just as we do on a regular IDE hard drive. AFAIK, a live usb system would not allow me to write data persistently just like a live CD. Also my original question was for a recommendation of FS for installing Debian on a USB flash drive. If you want it to act like a hard drive, put a "hard drive fs" on it: ext3. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA "I am not surprised, for we live long and are celebrated poopers." -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
RE: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
>What is the difference? What difference do you want to achieve with respect to >a 'live' debian system? I would like to use my USB device for reading and writing to the drive just as we do on a regular IDE hard drive. AFAIK, a live usb system would not allow me to write data persistently just like a live CD. Also my original question was for a recommendation of FS for installing Debian on a USB flash drive. Thanks. I do blog at http://blogs.koolwal.net/ > From: kushalkool...@hotmail.com > To: debian-user@lists.debian.org > Subject: Which FS for USB Flash Drive > Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:07:55 -0800 > > > > > > > > > Hi, > > > Does anybody have any experience with installing Debian (say Lenny) on USB > flash drives? I would like to install Debian on my PQI 4 GB USB flash drive > but I am not sure which filesystem to use - ext2, ext3, XFS? > > My primary concern/criteria in selecting a fs would be throughput/performance. > > I am tried searching around the internet but most of the articles talk about > preparing a LIVE USB flash drive which is *not* what I would like to do. I > just want a plain Debian system on my USB flash drive just like on any IDE > Hard Drive. > > Thanks > > I do blog at http://blogs.koolwal.net/ > > > > > > Windows Live™: E-mail. Chat. Share. Get more ways to connect. Check it out. _ Windows Live™ Hotmail®:…more than just e-mail. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t2_hm_justgotbetter_explore_012009 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Which FS for USB Flash Drive
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Kushal Koolwal wrote: > I am tried searching around the internet but most of the articles > talk about preparing a LIVE USB flash drive which is *not* what I > would like to do. I just want a plain Debian system on my USB flash > drive just like on any IDE Hard Drive. What is the difference? What difference do you want to achieve with respect to a 'live' debian system? IIRC, a usb-live system is just an installation that treats the usb drive like an ordinary (internal) drive. Johannes -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkl/YYkACgkQC1NzPRl9qEUjiQCffYc34wYeSlFdPpLG/UjATRFu ZCsAmwf/stOSaT2YREJmSKv+S3RvkvNi =cu9o -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
