Hello,
I would like to install opensuse leap 15 on a single SSD; Are there any precautions to take and special things to do? Small precision SSD will be good capacity between 860 GB or 1 TB.
Thanks for your help
Main things to consider…
“Small” is in the eye of the beholder. If you believe you could be cramped for enough space for your applications and files, you may want to not accept the default layout that configures a separate partition for /home. The default layout suggest making /home a separate partition for a slight improvement in file safety and can make migration simpler if you want or need to do a recovery or upgrade, but can make your disk space inefficient, for instance making your root partition vastly larger than needed if you like to store enormous amounts of personal files… Or, vice versa if you like to install some bigapplications that might store data in databases, then you might run out of space in your root partition. If both your root and /home files are all on a single partition, then your space utilization is not wasteful.
If you install on a brand new, unused SSD, you shouldn’t run into unwritable traps, but if for instance you install and then decide to re-install, then unless you clear the SSD traps, you’ll mysteriously run out of disk space. If you don’t know what I’m describing, read up a bit on how SSDs work regarding traps and the need to configure discard/fstrim.
Speaking of which, one of the first things you should do immediately after installation is to decide on what method of discard/trim you want to configure, and do so. You can configure automatic, manual, as part of your fstab disk options or as a separate command.
Various posts in this Forum describe what and how to do all this and there are numerous good articles (I look up the Arch Wiki articles which are constantly updated).
TSU
Thanks for you point of view
“Speaking of which, one of the first things you should do immediately after installation is to decide on what method of discard/trim you want to configure, and do so. You can configure automatic, manual, as part of your fstab disk options or as a separate command.”
I read a lot of articles on the subject, but not being a specialist, some are difficult to understand.
My use is simple, it is not a server but a station and most of the files are not on home but on other internal disks or USB connection.
At first glance, naive perhaps, it seemed easier to put everything, root and home on the same SSD.
Is it mandatory to configure the “trim” option if you do not want to have trouble?
You need not do anything. Upon installation fstrim.timer takes care of mounted file systems automatically once a week:
erlangen:~ # systemctl status fstrim.timer
● fstrim.timer - Discard unused blocks once a week
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/fstrim.timer; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/fstrim.timer.d
└─schedule.conf
Active: active (waiting) since Fri 2019-03-08 06:35:03 CET; 1 day 6h ago
Trigger: Sun 2019-03-10 00:00:00 CET; 11h left
Docs: man:fstrim
Mar 08 06:35:03 erlangen systemd[1]: Started Discard unused blocks once a week.
erlangen:~ # systemctl status fstrim.service
● fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/fstrim.service; static; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: inactive (dead) since Sat 2019-03-09 05:32:46 CET; 7h ago
Docs: man:fstrim(8)
Process: 19691 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/fstrim -Av (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 19691 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Mar 09 05:29:03 erlangen systemd[1]: Starting Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab...
Mar 09 05:32:46 erlangen fstrim[19691]: /boot/efi: 87.3 MiB (91512832 bytes) trimmed on /dev/nvme0n1p4
Mar 09 05:32:46 erlangen fstrim[19691]: /home-SSD: 184 GiB (197619363840 bytes) trimmed on /dev/sdb4
Mar 09 05:32:46 erlangen fstrim[19691]: /Tumbleweed-SSD: 11.9 GiB (12712927232 bytes) trimmed on /dev/sdb3
Mar 09 05:32:46 erlangen fstrim[19691]: /home: 200.3 GiB (215084564480 bytes) trimmed on /dev/nvme0n1p3
Mar 09 05:32:46 erlangen fstrim[19691]: /: 13.7 GiB (14711738368 bytes) trimmed on /dev/nvme0n1p2
Mar 09 05:32:46 erlangen systemd[1]: Started Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab.
erlangen:~ #
Periodic trim helps the SSD’s internal garbage collecting processes responsible for erasing blocks and managing wear leveling.
The default install on a SSD provides a fstrim timer once a week (see /usr/lib/systemd/system/fstrim.timer )
Unless you write a lot to your SSD (say like a database server with many users…) that should be enough; a typical laptop or workstation user doesn’t need more IMHO.
noatime is good to reduce unneeded writes