Post ATouhPi0XzUIOWXvRQ by acyberexpert@freeradical.zone
(DIR) More posts by acyberexpert@freeradical.zone
(DIR) Post #ATopvUp3pcfAXPjzjU by tek@freeradical.zone
2023-03-20T21:11:03Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Upgrade your Raspberry Pi with an SSD https://honeypot.net/post/upgrade-raspberry-pi-with-ssd/I upgraded my Raspberry Pi to use an external SSD drive instead of its built-in SD card reader. If you use your little computer for anything non-trivial, so should you.For boring old dd sequential reads, the SSD is several times faster than the SD card:# dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=10001000+0 records in1000+0 records out1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB, 1000 MiB) copied, [...]
(DIR) Post #AToqisw0yJc1VgXmgS by mhoye@mastodon.social
2023-03-20T21:19:52Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@tek do you have a hardware recommendation here?
(DIR) Post #ATosUw6YaZ9VCCx2sy by drwho@hackers.town
2023-03-20T21:39:48Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@tek I will consider it for the weather station. Whenever I get it together, that is. :ablobthirst:
(DIR) Post #ATouhPi0XzUIOWXvRQ by acyberexpert@freeradical.zone
2023-03-20T22:04:33Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@tek Linux and it’s I/O stalls with slow devices are real. It’s been over a decade and still a problem. More important: SD cards and SSD have different design targets. On an SD card a hardware fault slams the entire thing into read-only mode to safeguard your data whereas a SSD could mark the blocks bad and shuffle it elsewhere. Much more reliable. https://lwn.net/Articles/572911/
(DIR) Post #ATozKkZpIHIwE4jRWy by tek@freeradical.zone
2023-03-20T22:56:24Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@mhoye I got https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0874YDQ9K?ie=UTF8&psc=1&linkCode=sl1&tag=honeypot05-20&linkId=005ad4e0577948834d819be851334b34&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl and it’s known to work very well with RPis.
(DIR) Post #ATozPaS4MlM2GtPU5g by tek@freeradical.zone
2023-03-20T22:57:15Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@drwho If *all* you’re doing are sequential read/writes, the SD card is OK. It really falls over when you’re doing something write-heavy, and then everything freezes until it’s done.
(DIR) Post #ATozftqU1obN3Nbl0S by tek@freeradical.zone
2023-03-20T23:00:12Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@acyberexpert Yep yep yep. I also don’t know what the block write size is on an SD card — write 2 bytes and it pushes 1MB out to flash? — but the end result was it felt like every write takes like 1 second, regardless of how large it is.
(DIR) Post #ATpAgjkGAKvxVsIa12 by vertigo@hackers.town
2023-03-21T01:03:39Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@tek @acyberexpert SD cards use 512 byte blocks at the PC/SD interface. I think some protocol revisions allow an option for 4KB.In any event, note that SD cards also perform automated wear leveling, which incurs delays too. I've had write delays last as long as almost a minute on a 2GB SD card before. I discovered this the hard way when developing my Kestrel homebrew computer.
(DIR) Post #ATpB9o1xJNo1CaR9mK by tek@freeradical.zone
2023-03-21T01:08:57Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@vertigo @acyberexpert Ah, maybe that’s it?In any case: with SD card, pain. With SSD, birds singing in a clear blue sky.
(DIR) Post #ATpPfak7eICScG98eu by vertigo@hackers.town
2023-03-21T03:51:34Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@tek @acyberexpert Yeah, SD is pain on a stick.
(DIR) Post #ATqh8jVg1cIWaDpaJU by redlilrascal@freeradical.zone
2023-03-21T18:41:53Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@tek isnt it better to get a soc with a pcie lane so you can just add a sata expansion card? External usbs need to be remounted every boot right?
(DIR) Post #ATqhvy5KckGNybz9c0 by tek@freeradical.zone
2023-03-21T18:50:52Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@redlilrascal This was an upgrade on an RPi I already had laying around.Not in this case. I’m using it for the boot drive.
(DIR) Post #ATqi5lC3PRJEtEnarY by redlilrascal@freeradical.zone
2023-03-21T18:52:42Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@tek me and all my homies hate ewaste
(DIR) Post #ATrJXVc6cnWyyy4ySe by mytwobits01@freeradical.zone
2023-03-22T00:31:22Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@acyberexpert @tek Hey, thanks. I've been suffering with this, and didn't know where the problem lay. It's good to know at least that I'm not alone.But I thought this problem was solved in the 90s, with DMA doing I/O in the background and allowing the CPU to keep doing useful work.
(DIR) Post #ATrJXWGsBE8n1P9X0K by tek@freeradical.zone
2023-03-22T01:52:15Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@mytwobits01 @acyberexpert Funny, that was my first thought: “is this thing doing PIO?”
(DIR) Post #ATrJwJzgxmFaBUwWki by mytwobits01@freeradical.zone
2023-03-22T01:56:47Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@tek @acyberexpert Do you know the answer? I'm genuinely puzzled.
(DIR) Post #ATrM74wNTIzgageM3E by tek@freeradical.zone
2023-03-22T02:21:01Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@mytwobits01 @acyberexpert I don’t *think* so. ACE’s explanation seems most likely.