Ubuntu
ubiquity package

Ubuntu 11.10 does not enter 'discard' filesystem option on ext4 install on SSD drive

Bug #867794 reported by Mark East
This bug report is a duplicate of:  Bug #864051: TRIM support not enabled for SSDs. Edit Remove
106
This bug affects 23 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
ubiquity (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

I installed 11.10 the other day on my Macbook Air which has an SSD drive. Once installed I inspected the ftab and I noticed that it did not include the 'discard' option on my ext4 filesystem partition. The discard option enables TRIM support for SSD drives (I realise a lot of them now have TRIM support in the hardware but for those that don't but do support TRIM, they need this option) which prolongs their lives and keeps performance optimal, as it can degrade over time. The SSD drive should be detected at installation time and then this option added to the fstab.

See original description
Mark East (feasty)
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Evan (ev) wrote :

discard/TRIM is off by default, as the manpage says, "until sufficient testing has been done."

Changed in ubiquity (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
Revision history for this message
Mark East (feasty) wrote :

Thanks for the response but even still, I think it should warrant more importance than wishlist as this affects the life and performance of the hardware. The kernel has supported this feature since 2.6.33 and so I think a little more urgency is required.

Revision history for this message
owlstead (maarten-bodewes) wrote :

I second this. As SSD's become more common, it should be possible to use one without too much fuss for regular users. Editing fstab is certainly not for regular users. Not using trimming can become a problem real fast if data is changed a lot on the drive.

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in ubiquity (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
David Clayton (dcstar) wrote :

For any SSD compatible partition created by the Ubuntu installer or gparted or the Disk Manager then the appropriate TRIM option should be set.

It is relatively easy to test if a drive is a SSD (sda in this example):

cat /sys/block/sda/queue/rotational

0 (zero) means non-rotational (SSD), 1 means a "normal" rotational drive.

Any non-TRIM filesystem installed on a SSD should also be flagged with a big warning message that doing rewrites on this non-TRIM partition may eventually use up all the empty blocks and cripple SSD performance on ALL partitions.

Revision history for this message
nick rundy (nrundy) wrote :

interesting article about why using the "Discard" command is not the best choice for SSD and TRIM command.

http://opensuse.14.n6.nabble.com/SSD-detection-when-creating-first-time-fstab-td3313048.html

Revision history for this message
areteichi (areteichi) wrote :

Any update for 12.10 on this front? Hasn't "sufficient testing" been done by now for TRIM to be enabled by default?

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