Concept for new installation

[Virginio Miranda]

What do you think of my newest concept:

• 128 GB RAM - I've got 4 slots and having much RAM with identical modules is nice for editing many pictures parallel and videos. The modules on my recent system were discontinued when I wanted to double from 16 GB to 32 GB, so I want to avoid the repetition of this scenario by throwing some money at the shop keeper right now
• 256 GB swap - I'll just put a rather cheap PCIe 3.0 SSD in the free M.2 slot and will replace it, once it's worn out or the much faster PCIe 5.0 modules are cheaper. The price for this dedicated swap module is just 26 EUR now... but I can swap (more than needed and) faster than on a HDD, can hibernate and won't wear out my sacred root SSD ;-)
• 1 GB EFI - on a PCIe 4.0 SSD with 500 GB.
• 499 GB root - ext4 or btrfs on above PCIe 4.0 SSD.
• 8 TB home - ext4, btrfs, LVM, RAID... I still have to think a little about this.

In other words:

• 4x 32 GB RAM: 128 GB memory
• 1x 256 GB SSD: 256 GB swap
• 1x 500 GB SSD: 1 GB EFI and 499 GB root
• 2x 8TB HDD: 8 TB home

This way, I'll have a quite fast swap with an enormous size if ever needed - for a reasonable price.
My fast root is huge enough and won't wear out.
Huge user files that don't need that much speed will be stored in a dedicated secure place on two mirrored HDDs and a backup HDD.

Your first post is ok. Some minor changes here some there and you create a new concept. That is ok If you can afford 128 GB of ram, go ahead.

[nobbert]

The question is not, if I need more RAM in the future - the question is, when will I need more RAM.
So, I'd rather pay a little extra now and avoid the problem of not getting some RAM with the same CL-values in the future.

What do you think about swapping on this cheap, little 256 GB SSD instead of the root-SSD? Brillant idea or not?

[oshunluvr]

Kaputt spells with two 't' ;-)
But noted, either check out btrfs or use the software-RAID instead of the mainboard's option.

My spell check told me otherwise, LOL

[oshunluvr]

The question is not, if I need more RAM in the future - the question is, when will I need more RAM.
So, I'd rather pay a little extra now and avoid the problem of not getting some RAM with the same CL-values in the future.

What do you think about swapping on this cheap, little 256 GB SSD instead of the root-SSD? Brillant idea or not?

Definitely swap to a fast device. Swapping is the slowest thing that happens. So why wouldn't you want it to be as fast as possible?

@ here, I swap to an NVME drive. They're literally 200x faster than my enterprise hard drives. People will tell you about surface wear...blah, blah,blah, but today's devices will out last their usefulness. I have two SSDs with 61,000+ hours on each on my server. I will be replacing them before swapping kills them.


I am very curious as to what you do that will require 128GB of RAM plus 128GB of swap. Here, I have 64GB but can't seem to get over 14 or so used.

[nobbert]

So, first you steal our words and then you misspell them!

Hmmm... I might as well start with 64 GB RAM and sell those modules later and get matching sets of bigger (and faster?) modules (which might be even cheaper in the future?). That would save me 200 EUR now.

I'm not even sure, how much RAM I really need. I just figured, my recent system is 10 years old with 16 GB, so maybe invest a little and get 4x or even 8x the RAM-size.

[Virginio Miranda]

The question is not, if I need more RAM in the future - the question is, when will I need more RAM.
So, I'd rather pay a little extra now and avoid the problem of not getting some RAM with the same CL-values in the future.

What do you think about swapping on this cheap, little 256 GB SSD instead of the root-SSD? Brillant idea or not?

So, first you steal our words and then you misspell them!

Hmmm... I might as well start with 64 GB RAM and sell those modules later and get matching sets of bigger (and faster?) modules (which might be even cheaper in the future?). That would save me 200 EUR now.

I'm not even sure, how much RAM I really need. I just figured, my recent system is 10 years old with 16 GB, so maybe invest a little and get 4x or even 8x the RAM-size.

Well, you got the answer yourself. If you dont know how much ram do you really need, how can i tell you if the 256 GB SSD is a brillant idea for swap inside root-SSD or not? Do you like to listen about theory? Google for it.

In my situation i said it before: I dont use swap. I have 32 GB of memory ram, and is more than enough for my usage. My 512 MB of swap is on root-SSD, but i have to tell you, my swap is zero. My system dont use swap. It runs 24/7, dont power off, i do not make use of hibernate and i do not make a photo, video and music edition.

Your situation is different. You dont know how much ram do you need and what do you really need. I am not to be rude with you, Only try to help you.

I can see that your recent system is 10 years old with 16 GB and you said that is running kubuntu since 2007. So, you ask in your first post to some advices in order to avoid major mistakes. Following the sequences in this thread is more than clear for me that you are going to waste time and money.

What is your problem with your 10 years old system? The answer can be a good start to find out a new setup.

Lets try memory first. Type in Konqueror :

$ vmstat -s

What do you see there?

[nobbert]

One problem with my old system is, that it makes screeching noises. So I definitely want to replace at least the power supply.
And I guess, today's hardware (MB, CPU, RAM) will have better performance. At that time, I didn't have too much money and just bought low/mid-price range, whereas now I can invest a bit more.

vmstat tells me, that (without pic/vid-software open) I use 4 of 16 GB RAM and have about 7 GB free memory - just for the system running with some browsertabs and an mp3 playing.

I guess, I will go for the 64 GB RAM now and swap to this separate 256 GB SSD.
When the RAM gets used up and is sold cheaper in the future, I will max it to 128/192 GB which the mainboard can handle.
And if the swap-SSD ever gets broken, I can simply replace it for 26 EUR and don't have to worry about anything.

[Virginio Miranda]

One problem with my old system is, that it makes screeching noises. So I definitely want to replace at least the power supply.
And I guess, today's hardware (MB, CPU, RAM) will have better performance. At that time, I didn't have too much money and just bought low/mid-price range, whereas now I can invest a bit more.

vmstat tells me, that (without pic/vid-software open) I use 4 of 16 GB RAM and have about 7 GB free memory - just for the system running with some browsertabs and an mp3 playing.

I guess, I will go for the 64 GB RAM now and swap to this separate 256 GB SSD.
When the RAM gets used up and is sold cheaper in the future, I will max it to 128/192 GB which the mainboard can handle.
And if the swap-SSD ever gets broken, I can simply replace it for 26 EUR and don't have to worry about anything.

Ok, but there are more important info on $ vmstat -s output.

Stress the system. Open 15 pages with your browser, play mp3, go to youtube and play 4k video 60 fps. Do anything else you use to do in your daily usage.

go to Konsole and type $ vmstat -s again.

Copy and paste the entire output here please.

[nobbert]

I will build up the new system with 64 GB at first and post the vmstat-output from that system. This will take 1-3 weeks. I'll keep you updated.
The old one with 16 GB will replaced, no matter what.

[Virginio Miranda]

I will build up the new system with 64 GB at first and post the vmstat-output from that system. This will take 1-3 weeks. I'll keep you updated.
The old one with 16 GB will replaced, no matter what.

No worries nobbert .

64 GB of ram memory will be more that enough for your usage. There will be a lot of memory left.

Good luck.

[nobbert]

So, I built up the new machine, but the CPU-fan doesn't fit into the case - the case will be left open until a slimmer fan arrives...

I installed /boot/efi and / and /home on the SSD with 500 GB, swap is on the SSD with 256 GB.
The HDD-RAID is mounted in /home/username/RAID, so my own files are secure on the RAID, while the system's userfiles are on the faster SSD.

After installing the RAID, I have the problem that the system doesn't shutdown anymore.
I just get an unresponsive system where I can move the mouse, but nothing more...

"vmstat -s" for an absolutely not stressed machine:

$ vmstat -s
65037904 K Gesamtspeicher
1280992 K benutzter Speicher
588648 K aktiver Speicher
396944 K inaktiver Speicher
63539788 K freier Speicher
130828 K Pufferspeicher
708504 K Auslagerungsspeicher-Cache
524284 K Gesamt-Auslagerungsspeicher
0 K benutzter Auslagerungsspeicher
524284 K freier Auslagerungsspeicher
349 nicht-nice Benutzer-CPU-Ticks
1 nice-Benutzer-CPU-Ticks
939 System-CPU-Ticks
65472 Untätig-CPU-Ticks
11921 E/A-Warten-CPU-Ticks
0 IRQ-CPU-Ticks
15 softirq-CPU-Ticks
0 Gestohlene CPU-Ticks
0 non-nice guest cpu ticks
0 nice guest cpu ticks
603816 K paged in
35016 K paged out
0 pages swapped in
0 pages swapped out
337126 Interrupts
316891 CPU context switches
1737706446 Startzeit
1955 Forks

[oshunluvr]

Your vmstats aren't useful in troubleshooting why your RAID won't unmount - at least that's what I assume is happening. You need to know why it's hanging before anything can be fixed.

Next time you shutdown, try hitting the ESC key and see what's hanging. Or better yet, hit CTRL-ALT-F1 (log out of your user first) and enter sudo shutdown -v -h now and watch what happens. Recording the scrolling text on your cellphone could be helpful, but likely, the text will stop streaming once the problem process is reached. Then post that here...