How to: ReadyBoost with Ubuntu Linux

[max.durden]

EDIT: This thread is closed, and pending Staff review

Hi everybody,
by following this little tutorial you'll be able to use a USB pen prive as an additional swap. As a result, the pen drive will be used in the same way windows Vista does through the ReadyBoost functionality.

Instructions are very simple:

1) plug the pen drive in your usb connector;
2) if ubuntu automount the device (usually in /media/usbdisk), umount the device (ie., sudo umount /media/usbdisk);
3) sudo mkswap /dev/sda1 (assuming /dev/sda1 is the correct device for the connected usb device)
4) sudo swapon -p 32767 /dev/sda1

... and you are in!

do a "cat /proc/swaps" to check if everything is ok; on my laptop I get the following output:

Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/hda4 partition 2353512 116 -1 (standard HD swap partition)
/dev/sda1 partition 1981928 123900 32767 ("ReadyBoost"-style pen drive)

Quite obviously, performances are not the same as with real additional ram; however, I feel REAL gain in speed while using eclipse+tomcat+mysql for development on my laptop (which is equipped with just 512MB ram).

Possibly, a simple bash-script can be developed to automate the few steps...

Happy coding!

Max

[rolando2424]

Nice!

Too bad my pen is just 256 mb

[max.durden]

even if you have a small pen drive, you can still take some advantage from usb swapping: whenever usb space finishes, the system will automatically activate the "secondary" standard hd swap declared in the fstab conf directive!

Bye

Max

[Treviño]

I tried the same some time ago, the problem is that I've read somewhere around that the flash memories can be wasted by this rapid read-writing...
Is this true?

[max.durden]

Hi, Treviño
you are right. Specifically, the usb storage writing cycles are limited, not the reading ones. However, I'm still incline to consider usb mass storages as a cheap solution to strict memory requirements: in example, if you check the Ebay for usb storages you can get a 2 gb pendrives for less than 10 euros (plus delivery cost).

Quite obviously, I'm not saying that you can substitute ram for pen drives, but situation exist where they are really useful. In my case, I use my *standard* 512 MB Mb for normal laptop use, and exploit "readyboost" only when I'm working on web development at home, where I cannot exploit facilities offered by other networked pcs.

Happy coding

Max

[berserker]

Possibly, a simple bash-script can be developed to automate the few steps...

Thanks for this tip. I was wondering if this could be done in Linux.

Can't you just add this to /etc/fstab as the second swap entry?

[max.durden]

I think you could add the swap entry to fstab, but this implies that you should have your pen drive already connected at boot time. If you are working on a desktop, this is fine, but with a laptop I think it is better to write a bash script to be invoked "on-demand" whenever you need the extra usb swap partition.

Bye

Max

[hype]

You could make use of your usb pen uuid:
sudo vol_id -u /dev/hdxy

Then configuring you fstab, your pen will always be mounted where you want.
I dont know how to "add" this command to fstab tho: sudo swapon -p 32767 /dev/sda1

[miggols99]

How do I stop the readyboost? When I looked on my flash drive it had a file on it, and I had to format it to remove it in Ubuntu.

[max.durden]

"swapoff /dev/sda1", assuming /dev/sda1 is the correct device for your pen drive

Max