A complete zram-config utility for swap, directories, and logs to reduce SD, NAND and eMMC block wear.
This is a complete zram-config utility for swap, directories, and logs to reduce SD, NAND and eMMC block wear. zram-config implements zram to prevent frequent writing to the disk and allow near ram speed access to working directories with varying compression ratios depending on the compression algorithm.
A ztab table in
/etc/ztabis used to configure where any combination and number of zram drives are to be created. This project uses an OverlayFS mount with zram so that syncFromDisk on start is not needed. In theory this should allow for faster boots and larger directories as no complete directory copy is needed as it is the lower mount in the OverlayFS. Many thanks go to @kmxz for the overlayfs-tools used to make this possible.
The rationale for zram-config is that many distributions have
zram-configpackages that are actually broken, even by name, as often they are a zram-swap-config package in reality. But even then they do not check for other zram services or change the parameters of swap from HD based configurations to ram optimized ones. If all you are looking for is a zram-swap utility see zram-swap-config.
Both zram-swap-config and this project are examples for distributions to get their zram packages updated.
Also if the OverlayFS guys would actually make some official merge/snapshot tools and not just leave it as just enough for Docker that would be massively useful, and if anyone fancies shouting out that call please do.
sudo apt-get install git git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/ecdye/zram-config cd zram-config sudo ./install.bash
Note: The recommended way to stop the
zram-config.serviceis to run
shell sudo zram-config "stop"NOT
shell sudo systemctl stop zram-config.servicebecause of issues with the way systemd works with zram logging.
The service will stop normally on reboot, there is no need to manually stop it.
cd /path/to/zram-config/ sudo ./update.bash
sudo /usr/local/share/zram-config/uninstall.bash
All configuration is done in the
/etc/ztabfile.
Use
#to comment out any line, add new drives with the first column providing the drive type and then drive details separated by tab characters.
All algorithms in
/proc/cryptoare supported but only
lzo-rle,
lzo,
lz4, and
zstdhave zramctl text strings;
lzo-rleis the fastest with
zstdhaving much better text compression.
mem_limitis the compressed memory limit and will set a hard memory limit for the system admin.
disk_sizeis the virtual uncompressed size approx. 220-450% of memory allocated depending on the algorithm and input file. Don't make it much higher than the compression algorithm is capable of as it will waste memory because there is a ~0.1% memory overhead when empty.
swap_prioritywill set zram over alternative swap devices.
page-cluster0 means tuning to singular pages rather than the default 3 which caches 8 for HDD tuning, which can lower latency.
swappiness80 because the improved performance of zram allows more usage without any adverse affects from the default of 60. It can be raised up to 100 but that will increase process queue on intense loads such as boot time.
target_diris the directory you wish to hold in zram, and the original will be moved to a bind mount
bind_dirand is synchronized on start, stop, and write commands.
bind_diris the directory where the original directory will be mounted for sync purposes. Usually in
/optor
/var, name optional.
oldlog_dirwill enable log-rotation to an off device directory while retaining only live logs in zram. Usually in
/optor
/var, name optional.
If you need multiple zram swaps or zram directories, just create another entry in
/etc/ztab. To do this safely, first stop zram using
sudo zram-config "stop", then edit
/etc/ztab. Once finished, restart zram using
sudo systemctl start zram-config.service.
# swap alg mem_limit disk_size swap_priority page-cluster swappiness swap lzo-rle 250M 750M 75 0 80dir alg mem_limit disk_size target_dir bind_dir
#dir lzo-rle 50M 150M /home/pi /pi.bind
log alg mem_limit disk_size target_dir bind_dir oldlog_dir
log lzo-rle 50M 150M /var/log /log.bind /opt/zram/oldlog
Run
zramctlin your preferred shell and if you see and output similar to below, yes it is working.
[email protected]:~ $ zramctl NAME ALGORITHM DISKSIZE DATA COMPR TOTAL STREAMS MOUNTPOINT /dev/zram0 lz4 1.2G 4K 76B 4K 4 [SWAP] /dev/zram1 lz4 150M 16.3M 25.1K 208K 4 /opt/zram/zram1 /dev/zram2 lz4 60M 7.5M 1.2M 1.7M 4 /opt/zram/zram2
To view more information on zram usage take a look at the following commands and their corresponding output.
[email protected]:~ $ df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/root 14803620 2558152 11611220 19% / devtmpfs 470116 0 470116 0% /dev tmpfs 474724 223868 250856 48% /dev/shm tmpfs 474724 12284 462440 3% /run tmpfs 5120 4 5116 1% /run/lock tmpfs 474724 0 474724 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/mmcblk0p1 44220 22390 21831 51% /boot /dev/zram1 132384 280 121352 1% /opt/zram/zram1 overlay1 132384 280 121352 1% /home/pi/MagicMirror /dev/zram2 55408 3460 47648 7% /opt/zram/zram2 overlay2 55408 3460 47648 7% /var/log tmpfs 94944 0 94944 0% /run/user/1000
[email protected]:~ $ free -h total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 927M 206M 184M 233M 535M 434M Swap: 1.3G 0B 1.3G
[email protected]:~ $ swapon NAME TYPE SIZE USED PRIO /dev/zram0 partition 1.2G 0B 75 /var/swap file 100M 0B -2
[email protected]:/opt/zram $ ls log.bind magicmirror.bind oldlog zram1 zram2
[email protected]:/opt/zram $ top top - 23:18:21 up 1:28, 2 users, load average: 0.31, 0.29, 0.29 Tasks: 114 total, 1 running, 68 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie %Cpu(s): 1.9 us, 0.1 sy, 0.0 ni, 98.0 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st KiB Mem : 949448 total, 153464 free, 223452 used, 572532 buff/cache KiB Swap: 1331192 total, 1331192 free, 0 used. 412052 avail MemPID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1215 pi 20 0 600844 325968 287276 S 5.3 34.3 8:09.51 chromium-browse 2536 pi 20 0 8104 3204 2728 R 1.6 0.3 0:00.11 top 970 pi 20 0 775108 156128 112876 S 1.0 16.4 11:17.06 chromium-browse 1611 pi 20 0 11656 3772 3056 S 0.3 0.4 0:00.30 sshd 1 root 20 0 27072 5964 4824 S 0.0 0.6 0:02.51 systemd 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd 4 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/0:0H 6 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 mm_percpu_wq 7 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.24 ksoftirqd/0 8 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.87 rcu_sched 9 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_bh
LZO-RLE offers the best performance and is probably the best choice, and from kernel 5.1 and onward it is the default. You might have text based low impact directories such as
/var/logor
/var/cachewhere a highly effective text compressor such as zstd is optimal, with effective compression that can be up to 200% of what LZO may achieve especially with text. With
/tmpand
/run, zram is unnecessary because they are RAM mounted as
tmpfsand, if memory gets short, then the zram swap will provide extra. It is only under intense loads that the slight overhead of zram compression becomes noticeable.
This chart from facebook/zstd provides a good benchmark for the performance of the different compressors.
| Compressor name | Ratio | Compression | Decompress. | |:-----------------|:------|:------------|:------------| | zstd 1.4.5 -1 | 2.884 | 500 MB/s | 1660 MB/s | | zlib 1.2.11 -1 | 2.743 | 90 MB/s | 400 MB/s | | brotli 1.0.7 -0 | 2.703 | 400 MB/s | 450 MB/s | | quicklz 1.5.0 -1 | 2.238 | 560 MB/s | 710 MB/s | | lzo1x 2.10 -1 | 2.106 | 690 MB/s | 820 MB/s | | lz4 1.9.2 | 2.101 | 740 MB/s | 4530 MB/s | | lzf 3.6 -1 | 2.077 | 410 MB/s | 860 MB/s | | snappy 1.1.8 | 2.073 | 560 MB/s | 1790 MB/s |
With swap, zram changes what is normally a static assumption that a HD is providing the swap using
swapinessand
page-cachewhere default
swapinessis 60 and page-cache is 3. Depending on the average load zram will benefit from a setting of 80-100 for
swapinessand changing
page-cacheto 0 so that singular pages are written which will greatly reduce latency. It is a shame
swapinessis not dynamically based on load as for many systems there is often a huge difference in boot startup to settled load. In some cases you may find you are reducing
swapinesspurely because of boot load.