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On Wednesday, 6 March 2019 16:31:27 GMT Laurence Perkins wrote: |
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> On Fri, 2019-03-01 at 10:12 +0000, Peter Humphrey wrote: |
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> > [OT] |
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> > Evidence is mounting that the Atom box is in terminal decline. I get |
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> > things like batches of files in the portage tree changing owner, and then |
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> > when I correct that, long lists of supposedly locally changed ebuilds |
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> > preventing syncing. And when I boot weekly into its little rescue system |
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> > to backup the main system, the root filesystem remounts itself read-only |
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> > while tar is running. Smartd recognises the SSD and runs daily tests, but |
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> > reports no errors. No amount of wiping and reinstalling has helped so far. |
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> |
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> What filesystem are you running and how old is the SSD? That sounds |
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> like some of the symptoms EXT4 had on early generation flash media |
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> where its assumptions about what order writes would physically make it |
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> to the disk in were wrong, leading to corruption. |
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The disk is a 64GB SanDisk SDSSDP device, which I bought five years ago to |
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replace a failed spinning disk. All partitions are ext4 except /boot, which is |
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ext2. |
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> So unless it was working correctly at some point in the past, try a |
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> different filesystem. EXT3 or BTRFS didn't have the same problems. |
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It was working just fine until recently. |
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> If it's just that the SSD is failing, then get a new one before |
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> something important gets damaged and you have to redo the whole thing. |
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Everything on it is disposable. |
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The box is getting a bit long in the tooth: I bought it in November 2010. It's |
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a single-core, 32-bit Atom N270 (not N2700). It doesn't owe me anything now, |
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in spite of having cost £450 at the time. I don't know whether it's worth |
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throwing any more money at it. On the other hand, I see Amazon are only asking |
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for £20 for a small SSD. |
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The repeatability of some of the errors it throws makes me question whether |
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the disk or something else is at fault. (What would cause a file system to be |
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remounted read-only in the middle of its work?) |
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I have a spare four-core, 64-bit Celeron box (I bought it for a purpose that's |
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gone away). I've been wondering what to do with it, so maybe it can replace |
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the Atom box. It's powerful enough to compile its own software, whereas the |
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Atom needs help. Whichever I use, its job will be as a server of DNS, LAN |
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mail, time and git. Maybe print too. Also it will fetch my ISP's POP mail and |
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serve it over IMAP to this box. |
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> The self-test capability of storage media is almost universally |
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> horrible and you generally don't get a failure report until your data |
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> has already been lost. If your SMART output gives you the raw |
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> statistics on the device instead of just pass/fail then analyzing that |
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> usually gives a better indication of whether something is about to go |
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> wrong. |
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It seems to report only pass/fail, so that's not much help. |
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Decisions, decisions... |
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-- |
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Regards, |
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Peter. |
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