Out-of-the-Box, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS To Support TRIM On SSDs 133
First time accepted submitter Maurits van der Schee writes "Where in older versions you had to add a cron job calling "fstrim" or mounting with the "discard" option in fstab, the new LTS (Long Term Stable) version of Ubuntu Linux will automatically enable TRIM for your SSD. Good news for hardware enthusiasts!"
Stable? (Score:5, Informative)
"LTS is an abbreviation for "Long Term Support" [ubuntu.com]."
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?! (Score:5, Funny)
HOLY FUCK, MAN! JUST WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!?!?!
This is Slashdot, for crying out loud. How DARE you bring facts and correct information to the discussion here! THAT IS NOT ALLOWED! You just can't do that! FUCK!
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I wish I had a +1 funny mod point for him
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You don't waste mod points on an AC
Mod up good ideas. The name (or lack therof) is irrelevant.
It's Long-term support... (Score:1)
Aside from this being old news, along with the typical comments about Windows 7 having the feature since introduction.
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along with the typical comments about Windows 7 having the feature since introduction
Well, let me be that guy... ;)
Windows implements TRIM command for more than just file delete operations. The TRIM operation is fully integrated with partition- and volume-level commands like format and delete, with file system commands relating to truncate and compression, and with the Volume Snapshot feature.[1] [msdn.com]
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Ubuntu != Linux (Score:4, Informative)
It's been in the kernel for a long time now, google tells me since 2.6.33 (Which was released early 2010, about a half a year after Windows 7 was released). Ubuntu 12.04 (The last LTS) shipped with 3.2, so you could already enable TRIM using 12.04. This announcement is nothing more then a default settings change, I have no idea why it's even a big deal (Or why this wasn't already the default, I've been using it for a while now).
Re: "Good news for hardware enthusiasts!"... (Score:5, Insightful)
...or typesetters & typists, accountants, video editors, music composers, engineers & architects, etc. In fact, anyone who produces, rather than consumes will tend to use computers as their main system. SSDs work nicely for all of them, if only to store the OS and program files.
That you only know gamers and developers says more about the company you keep rather than what technology is used out there. It is true that tablets and smart phone sales are on the rise and PC sales are declining, but that doesn't mean that people have stopped using their old computers.
Re: "Good news for hardware enthusiasts!"... (Score:1)
I'm still using a dual socket quad core Xeon from 2006. Plenty of speed. Not sure when I will need more. I have a second desktop that is a 2700k. Just as fast. Only upgrades I do are ssds or 4tb drives. I will run these until they just stop. 5 more years, maybe 10... Whatever.
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Don't worry. Norton will take care of your computer soon.
Re: "Good news for hardware enthusiasts!" (Score:1)
Defeats pleasure of unnecessary labour (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Defeats pleasure of unnecessary labour (Score:5, Interesting)
But surely this defeats the perceived satisfaction of tweaking and fixing it all up manually? Where's the fun in that?
If that's your thing, use Gentoo instead. At least that's what I do. In case you're being sarcastic, the fun IMHO is in learning about your system and understanding why distros make the choices they do. I think my first week with Linux taught me more about computers than years with DOS/Windows, and I still wonder how a Windows machine can be anyone's "Personal Computer".
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Goatse.sx - You must be new here.
Your other fun (Score:3)
Taking too long (Score:5, Insightful)
This is way overdue.
It's also taking too long for file systems that provide snapshot features to become mainstream and default as well. And no, LVM snapshots aren't good enough.
No, I'm not going to write the patches. They wouldn't be accepted in any case. Fundamental features such as the IO stack and file systems are now the exclusive purview of well-heeled outfits like Red Hat, Oracle, Intel, OSDL, etc. and and their stable of full time developers.
They just need to do their jobs and get it done.
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Re:Taking too long (Score:5, Funny)
I've been choosing btrfs through the debian installer for at least a couple of years now.
Dude you so have to try ZFS. It's aweso--
Yes, I know it's not as awesome as ZFS, but it still beats mdraid and lvm.
Oh--sorry. Got ahead of myself there. Good thing you stopped me in time.
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For single drives yes it seems to work well and so I can give you some advantages over filesystem unaware LVM. However in my experience (last tested in September) it doesn't come anywhere close to mdraid for multiple device setups. The tools don't accurately show the kernel state (drive missing or not) and there are a number of inconsistencies just in hotplugging drives. Oh and that is the only option because you can't even forcibly fail a drive from a RAID1 to replace it.
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I'm pretty sure yanking a drive out of a RAID1 bay will "forcibly fail" it.
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I'm currently using LVM snapshots for upgrades and backups -- what am I missing compared file system snapshots?
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I don't understand what's scarier about this: /dev/foo/bar /vmfs/volumes/foo/bar.vmdk
lvextend -L+6G
than this:
vmkfstools -X 6G
But that wasn't really the the question I was asking -- what's the different between file-system snapshots and LVM-snapshots (other than filesystem-snapshots obviously don't allow changes to the filesystem itself, which most people don't care about most of the time). Is there something that makes tasks like backups or upgrades easier or faster? Is there some other task I'd snapshot fo
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Meh, all I can hear is "waaah waaah Give me my free stuff"
TRIM not always good (Score:5, Interesting)
the new LTS (Long Term Stable) version of Ubuntu Linux will automatically enable TRIM for your SSD. Good news for hardware enthusiasts!"
And terrible news for encryption experts. Enabling TRIM tells your adversary which sectors contain data and which don't. It's a great asset to cryptanalysis and also destroys plausible deniability that there's a filesystem present on the drive, and how much data is present in it -- thus eliminating the "shadow volume" option of Truecrypt and others.
Re:TRIM not always good (Score:5, Interesting)
No, YOU clearly don't know what you're talking about, and yet are arrogant as all hell.
The problem arises from the fact that while HDDs have only 2 operations (read, write) and therefore have no distinction outside the file-system of what is "free" and what is "allocated", SSDs have 3 (read, write, free), because SSDs label sectors as "free" or "allocated" (that is, the hardware itself, not just the file-system). So for a standard HDD encryption, the procedure goes: overwrite hard drive with random data, create encrypted partition, install OS on encrypted partition (last step optional, of course). What this accomplishes is that an attacker who examines the disk can't tell the difference between what is and isn't written to, since the unwritten data is random and the written data is encrypted (i.e. indistinguishable from random, if done correctly). On a TRIM-enabled SSD though, the OS sees all these unused sectors and proceeds to mark them as Free. That is a huge fucking problem, for the roughly the reasons the GP stated. In particular, it's egregiously bad for users of hidden volumes, since that hidden volume will never be TRIMed, and the attacker who can rubber hose your outer volume can see a chunk of disk that hasn't been trimmed, yet isn't allocated in the partition you gave them. They can now rubber hose THAT partition as well, whereas previously there was no way to know it even existed (in theory at least, the cryptsetup guys don't buy that).
If you don't believe this is an issue, then ask the Truecrypt devs:
http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/trim-operation
or the LUKS/dm-crypt devs:
http://asalor.blogspot.com/2011/08/trim-dm-crypt-problems.html
Please be more respectful in the future, as we're wrong more often than we like to think.
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He can't be wrong though, he's already marked at Score 4: Insightful at the time of this post. And since Slashdotters are so smart and intelligent the score must be correct, right?
I dunno. Problem is it's hard to know who's right and who's not. All I know is that Windows 7 had TRIM support automatically enabled for SSDs back in 2009 and the leading Linux distro's only finally going to enable it in 2014. No wonder so many people still see Linux as old and not suitable for end-user machines.
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I agree and would only like to add that on magnetic media you should use a low level disk maintenance program periodically to reads and writes blocks in place, thus refreshing the signature of the drive. Otherwise I can tell from the error correction frequency of the rotting magnetic bits that you have a "hidden" volume. SSD / flash drives had a similar problem before ware-leveling was common.
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You could, I dont know, check the size of the partition on the "plausible" volume he shows you. If drive size is 500GB, and the "plausible" partition is 250, and hes using truecrypt... GEE I WONDER.
Re:TRIM not always good (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, youre overstating the threat.
If the drive is encrypted, theres no more or less threat from brute-forcing.
From a plausible deniability standpoint, Im not terribly sure how helpful that is ANYWAYS. If someone wants to know if youre using truecrypt, they could, I dont know, look at the MBR and see whether its using the Truecrypt bootloader. The idea that you can say "What partition?" when goons grab your mysteriously unreadable laptop is laughable. Im sure there are super corner cases where that would be helpful, but generally if youre being held by the sorts of people who have the means and ability to do rubber hose cryptography, theyre not going to put up with your BS about "but wait look i gave you a password that boots to an Ubuntu partition which only accounts for 1/2 of the drive's size, and has no data worth encrypting whatsoever!"
Being involved with multiple organizations which employ encryption for very different reasons, none of them use plausible deniability / hidden encryptions; Id reckon because its not terribly helpful, or even plausible.
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If knowing how to construct a stream of contiguous, encrypted data helps you to break it easier than when it was scrambled / fragmented encrypted data, then your encryption is fundamentally broken, and turning TRIM off wont change that fact.
Otherwise there would be an option in truecrypt "please fragment my data as much as possible to make the encryption stronger".
Your links consist of truecrypt devs saying "it could be used for further analysis" without explaining what is meant by that, and some guy's rand
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But he didnt lay out a plausible attack. He indicated that an attacker could determine your filesystem based on sector useage, but thats it. Telling how the encrypted data is laid out shouldnt help you; even if you could grab the sectors containing individual files (which should not be possible), you STILL wouldnt be any closer to breaking the encryption-- if you were, the encryption is already flawed.
What hes basically saying is that the encryption is not secret and your OS / FS may be identifiable, even
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Truecrypt files instead of partitions?
Wouldn't that counter the issue of TRIMing? If the Truecrypt volume is created of a fixed size it won't get TRIMed by the OS. You can then have anything you want in that partition including a shadow volume, and in this scenario there's nothing to indicate that the shadow exists saving you at least one rubberhosing.
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He wasn't being disrespectful because he thought my post was technically inaccurate, he was being disrespectful because a lot of people don't like me on slashdot because I have strong opinions and mercilessly club their favorite things
xD I enjoy your bitchiness, but I'm a wackjob. ;) Keep it up.
Regards.
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any opinion I state winds up pissing off some fanboy.
And the best thing about your posts is that they are never wrong!
Narcissism FTW!
Re:TRIM not always good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: TRIM not always good (Score:1)
Um, you should get over yourself.
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"You need more training."
Speak for yourself, failure at cryptoanalysis.
That's how I break into encrypted crap all the time. SSDs make it much easier to find hidden data.
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That's how I break into encrypted crap all the time.
The new locks your mom put on the basement door don't count.
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Trying to insult tends to fall flat when I'm one of the people responsible for your low food prices.
It's your mother living in my basement, child. She services my husband and myself.
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Trying to insult tends to fall flat when I'm one of the people responsible for your low food prices.
Eh? Who are you and how are you responsible for decreasing the price of the food I grow on my farm?
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Your method of cultivation is likely wasteful, polluting, and irresponsible.
I can do it at 10% of the price you do, using 1/8 the land area, consuming between 60-90% less water, and a ~50% reduction in required fertilizers. Because it's in a much smaller area, the requirement of machines for harvesting is gone. My production buildings can be entirely solar-powered, as well.
Morocco, Australia, China, UK, Japan, USA, Brazil, all utilize my technology.
Your seed stock, if not from Monsanto, or produced yourself
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Your method of cultivation is likely wasteful, polluting, and irresponsible.
How so? I own my land, I till my land, I plant on my land, and it feeds my family and there's usually enough to feed other families as well.
I can do it at 10% of the price you do, using 1/8 the land area, consuming between 60-90% less water, and a ~50% reduction in required fertilizers.
I use cow manure from a local auction house and no pesticides along with rainwater and water from my pond.
Because it's in a much smaller area, the requirement of machines for harvesting is gone.
Other than the rototiller and the pickup tuck I use to haul the manure, everything else is done by hand or with hand tools like a shovel and hoe
My production buildings can be entirely solar-powered, as well.
It's called a greenhouse. We're setting one up this spring.
Morocco, Australia, China, UK, Japan, USA, Brazil, all utilize my technology.
You invented the sun and rain?
Your seed stock, if not from Monsanto, or produced yourself, likely came from a building utilizing my technologies.
We try to avoid seeds fro
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Your joke was pretty poor, and your arguments equally weak. Soil based farming is wasteful. It's proven. It is resource-intensive and uses more than what is truly needed. You're wasting your own resources and wallowing in your ignorance.
Your 'it's called a greenhouse' quip is out of line, too. We make things grow without light - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZTikdxj8AI [youtube.com] and that tech has recently been expanded into growing lettuces herbs, and more (and not typical lightless crops.)
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Your joke was pretty poor, and your arguments equally weak. Soil based farming is wasteful. It's proven. It is resource-intensive and uses more than what is truly needed. You're wasting your own resources and wallowing in your ignorance.
Your vague allusions about being better than me because you know some magical farming technology are pretty tiresome. Funny how you never mention what they are so anyone reading your comments can prove that you're 'superior'. My guess is you have no clue what you're talking about.
Your 'it's called a greenhouse' quip is out of line, too.
It's slashdot dude. Don't take everything you read here too seriously.
We make things grow without light - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZTikdxj8AI [youtube.com] and that tech has recently been expanded into growing lettuces herbs, and more (and not typical lightless crops.)
Oh thank God I finally have a solution! All that sunlight that I was using up for my plants! I've heard rumors that due to my wasteful sunlight farming p
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"Don't take everything you read here too seriously."
When you're telling outright falsehoods, you'd better be prepared to get taken to task for it.
Like I said before, the thing about your mom changing the basement door locks was a joke. You're the one who went off into the woods talking about how your farming was superior or some such crap.
I notice you still can't come up with any counter-argument that has any rational factual basis, which is why you're trying to play the 'save face by making insults' game.
I'm not trying to save face. Like I said before, I made a joke. You thought it was in poor taste, and then started talking about farming. Everyone has their own sense of humor.
"Oh thank God I finally have a solution! All that sunlight that I was using up for my plants! I've heard rumors that due to my wasteful sunlight farming parts of Alaska actually have little or no sun for 6 months out of the year!!!11one1"
Now your sarcasm makes you look like a typical asshole with a lacking education.
"We're saved. All thanks to some dude posting on slashdot..."
Or you're screwed. I decide to hand this tech over to China, America's Ag. economy dies as it can no longer compete.
All of which I find irrelevant. I don't care what China does--short of landing on my doorstep with guns. I farm for my family and fr
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Hmm? trimmed-sectors return all zeroes. Non-written sectors also return all zeroes. SSDs are not exactly well-tailored for encripted volume usage, and that's it.
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Oh please.
Most users don't want their drives go down to 5 megs per second. Trying to justify your OS doesn't cut it.
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Isn't this one of those situations though where if you are likely to be rubber-hosed, you probably would have compiled the kernel yourself with this type of thing disabled?
I can't see someone downloading and installing a pre-compiled distro if they are that worried about security....
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Isn't that a configuration that can be changed? That's a default, I assume the "experts" will have no problem to set up their desired behavior.
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(1) [Easiest solution] Turn off TRIM usage on encrypted volumes - loss of peak performance, but now you've got your "plausable deniability" back
(2) [Adequate solution] Fix the firmware so that reading a TRIMed block causes random data to be written to it. However, you had better make sure that exactly the same power usage and timing comes from this activity compared to reading a previously-written block. You had also better be sure that the data is really random, so it can't be distinguished from encrypted
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This kind of automatic naysaying because of a rare use case is why awesome projects don't move forward. The most vocal objections to progress come from people who rely on an unintended side effect of the interaction between complex pieces of software.
Oh, wait, I forgot. "Terrible news" means "I might actually have to remember to disable TRIM support if I A) buy an SSD, B) use TrueCrypt, and C) rely on shadow volume support."
If you, or anyone, is relying on the plausible deniability feature of truecrypt en
TRIM? who needs it! (Score:4, Insightful)
How to get away from random writes you ask? Simple! Just use BTRFS.
"But my database!" you say. Well, the answer is simple - time to move away from 50 year old technology and to a modern database engine, the kind that doesn't do random writes either (fractal tree based, for example).
Disclaimer: All of the above is not written for stodgy "enterprise level" types.
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partition Czechoslovakia
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i hear balance is the ultimate solution for any btrfs problem.
ran out of free space? balance it!
bad filesystem corruption after power loss? balance it!
faulty blocks? balance it!
tree not balanced? balance it!
neighbor's dog taking a dump on your lawn? get the hell off m^W^W^W^W^W balance it!
i think you kind of get the idea
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Or you could use ZFS, which is an actual mature and reliable system which uses COW.
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Im not entirely sure you understand what TRIM does. Its not to get rid of random writes, its to deal with a scenario where you have written and deleted 120GB from a 120GB SSD. Your OS has marked 120GB as "deleted", but those blocks are still occupied and cannot be re-written until they are first erased. This incurs a penalty, particularly since the erase block size is typically larger than the FS cluster size.
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That is not correct: its not about doing anything safely or even about wear-leveling. The filesystem is what handles writes, and it knows where is safe to write to, and wear-leveling is helped by TRIM but that is not what TRIM actually does.
TRIM simply informs the drive that it can perform an erase on a particular block when the filesystem marks it as deleted. This is so that any erases or remapping that needs to happen can e done when the drive is idle-- basically, it triggers garbage collection. With
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The situation is thus:
An SSD is a physical storage that presents a logical drive to the system. There is no 1:1 mapping between physical sectors and logical sectors. Logical sector 0 is always the boot sector, but can be located anywhere on the physical media.
An SSD is also unaware of the file system that is present. Prior to TRIM the entire logical volume, including all of its free sectors, were always allocated to physical locations and the SSD was unaware of which
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wTF Windows 7 had this 4 years ago (Score:1)
And supports vectors of ranges to Trim. Does it support this spec yet?
Come on.
Good News for Mint Enthusiasts (Score:1)
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That being said, I run {Free,Net}BSD, so your point about the linux community is moot.
Protip (even applies to both, linux and BSD communities): It's only you lazy fucks who we're not friendly with.
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Out-of-the-box? (Score:5, Informative)
Does Linux come in a box these days, I thought you just downloaded it, and didn't have to pay for it and the packaging...
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I find the term "out-of-the-box" much preferable to "baked-in", which they are even using to describe built-in features on software nowadays.
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