I think I read a long time ago that cloning the OS to the external SD provides better performance due to also providing a bigger swap space and such.

Where does this stand?
What are the benefits of running the OS from the internal SD vs the external SD? (and vice-verse).


I'd appreciate your comments,
Thanks.

Pro of the internal is that it's always there (e.g. you can insert/remove the external while running), and that it doesn't take up space on the (usually larger) external, plus, you can keep the whole external as a single large FAT partition (for connecting/inserting to windows machines, if that matters to you). Having the system on the external on the other hand can be faster and the system partition can be larger.

it "can" be faster or it IS faster? how faster is it?

Booting from SD has a performance gain over booting from flash.

I have seen 10-15 seconds quicker during boot. Swap is available in both boot from SD and boot from flash configurations.

To me the biggest reason I like to boot from flash, is space. My KDE takes over 1GB so it cannot fit in flash. I can aslo boot to flash and fix the boot from SD partitions should something go wrong, install some bad package.

I just reread this again, perhaps you mean the 2GB internal memory in the 810 vs external microSD.

If this is what your asking, I see no performance difference between internal 2GB on the 810 and the external 4GB Class 6 kingston.

They perform equally.

penguinbait, not sure I understand what is your recommendation then

I can verify the increased boot speed when it's booting from the external SD.

As you said regarding swap space - the OS can still be on the internal flash and swap on the external SD so that doesn't really change anything.

Internal flash space is 2gb if I remember correctly.
So, are you having your system booting from flash or from the SD?


on a side note... it's just that I remember when I first got the device (new) even video playback was so-so, then when I cloned the system to the external SD the performance was better. maybe it was just the addition of a bigger swap on the external SD that made the difference?

penguinbait - thanks for the quick adaption to your answer - indeed I was referring to internal sd flash vs an external sd card (I'm using the 8gb sandisk edition iirc)

The 810 came with flash (a jffs2 filesystem) where the OS lives. This a compressed fielsystem, so cloning to the 2GB internal or an external SD you would see performance increase.

Once cloned you should be able to boot to either the internal or external or flash.

Do you get a bootmenu on startup asking you which one to choose?

I'm really confused now.

Keep in mind we're talking about the N810 version.
So there are 3 locations in total?
1. an internal compressed jffs
2. an internal 2gb sd
3. an external Xdb sd card

If this is indeed the case could you tell me which am I booting from by looking at my other thread's df output pastebin?

Is this correct?
I currently indeed see the bootmenu due to the command you instructed me to perform before (initfs cal-tool ... ask:flash)

Regards,
Liran.

It all looks correct to me, the problem was before, you cloned it, but without that default getting set, it never showed the bootmenu, it just booted.

So things are looking better now.

#
~ $ df
#
Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
#
/dev/mmcblk0p2 4096 2388 1708 58% /mnt/initfs
#
none 512 144 368 28% /mnt/initfs/tmp
#
/dev/mmcblk1p2 1693280 572708 1034556 36% /
#
none 512 144 368 28% /tmp
#
none 1024 68 956 7% /dev
#
tmpfs 1024 0 1024 0% /dev/shm
#
/dev/mmcblk0p1 122622 5558 117064 5% /media/mmc2
#
/dev/mmcblk1p1 7969280 2975648 4993632 37% /media/mmc1

This df output tells me your booting from the Internal 2GB card.

/dev/mmcblk0 External SD Slot
/dev/mmcblk1 Internal SD Slot

I believe if the External SD slot is empty, then the Internal SD slot would be /dev/mmcblk0.

Things dont exactly match as far as mmc#'s go

So if you want to default boot to your internal SD slot, set it to ask:mmc1
external slot would be ask:mmc2



Hopefully this all makes sense

pb


---------------------------------------------------------
As root run in xterm

chroot /mnt/initfs cal-tool --set-root-device ask:mmc2
or
chroot /mnt/initfs cal-tool --set-root-device ask:flash

This will set the default to mmc2 or flash and display a bootmenu for you to choose.