The weekly fstrim on mounted partitions has long been set up in MX-Linux.Domenico wrote: Sat Mar 29, 2025 4:41 am Good morning,
I know that the Linux kernel supports TRIM as of version 2.6.33.
Is TRIM enabled by default in MX, or do I need to change some settings or install additional software for it to work? If so, how?
Thanks.
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lsblk -o +DISC-GRAN,DISC-MAX"Trim is run automatically once a week" means that trim is run automatically once a week. As you've already demonstrated, you know this is scheduled by means of a file in /etc/cron.weekly. The cron daemon decides when to run this and it's generally pretty good about being able to count to 7 days.danux wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 8:02 am 1. What does it mean: "Trim is run automatically once a week"? It means, if I keep the laptop open for at least a week, Trim will run once, but if I shutdown the system everyday, Trim will not run anymore
Then run trim at a precise day and time of your choosing. You know what the fstrim-mx script does and where it lives. You can move it to a different location and call it from a new crontab, possibly in /etc/cron.d, without causing any trouble. "man 5 crontab" will be useful here and while DuckDuckGo doesn't seem to do crontabs in its search engine anymore, there are still other useful tools online that can help.danux wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 8:02 am 2. I am interested to know when exactly will run Trim, at least in what day of the week. Is it possible to know, or Trim will run completely random?
Thank you for reply, man.DukeComposed wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 8:56 am"Trim is run automatically once a week" means that trim is run automatically once a week. As you've already demonstrated, you know this is scheduled by means of a file in /etc/cron.weekly. The cron daemon decides when to run this and it's generally pretty good about being able to count to 7 days.danux wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 8:02 am 1. What does it mean: "Trim is run automatically once a week"? It means, if I keep the laptop open for at least a week, Trim will run once, but if I shutdown the system everyday, Trim will not run anymore
That doesn't mean it's still going to work as intended if you try to outthink it and start playing tricks like shutting your machine down. cron is an old piece of scheduling software and it's fairly reliable, but it's not psychic and it doesn't have magic powers.
Then run trim at a precise day and time of your choosing. You know what the fstrim-mx script does and where it lives. You can move it to a different location and call it from a new crontab, possibly in /etc/cron.d, without causing any trouble. "man 5 crontab" will be useful here and while DuckDuckGo doesn't seem to do crontabs in its search engine anymore, there are still other useful tools online that can help.danux wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 8:02 am 2. I am interested to know when exactly will run Trim, at least in what day of the week. Is it possible to know, or Trim will run completely random?
Thank you so much for this answer. This is gold. It is the exact info I was looking for, clear concise and to the point. I see, that the One who really Knows, doesn't waste words.dolphin_oracle wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 9:38 am anancron runs cron jobs in the hourly, weekly, daily, and monthly schedules based on time stamps from the last run, stored in /var/spool/anacron. if a time stamp doesn't exist, or if a date/time is passed (say, while a PC is off), the jobs will be run within so many minutes of service startup/boot, 5 for daily, 10 for weekly, if I remember correctly.
running missed jobs is an advantage of anacron.
Thank you for your input Charles.CharlesV wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 11:09 am @danux You are very mistaken if you believe trim is the only factor that prevents file recovery on an ssd. There are many factors that can determine deleted file recovery, including the drive mfg and how the process things along with the OS's regular file creation.
If having the ability to retain deleted files is a priority for you, I would urge you to look into either a subversion on your important files, or a back up which runs continuously and provides retention.
You're asking cron questions. cron jobs are going to come up. It's important to point out that trim is a hardware health and performance feature of some SSDs, not a recovery option. Whatever you think trim does, I think you should re-educate yourself on that first and foremost. The form, function, and hygiene of file integrity and an effective backup policy is not solely predicated on whether or not you let a disk maintenance cron job run. Focus on fixing the problem -- fear of data loss -- instead of getting distracted by how cron works and hoping that it will save you after an accident.danux wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 10:00 am since I am not familiar with cron jobs, I never use them
All this is needed for knowing, in case I accidentally delete something, if I can still recover it, by knowing that the Trim wasn't yet performed on the SSD.
Maybe I don't said all my purposes, hence the misunderstanding. In fact, I like Forensics field and want to learn more about it, especially regarding SSDs since, the recovery on these is more difficult and in a short opportunity window, from what I understand. I already have my data on external SSD and HDD. I bought already a 2TB 2.5" HDD to make a copy of that SSD with data, even though I have a partial copy on a 1TB HDD. Even though, it can appear an error from my part and delete something I need and not already saved elsewhere. I know about the health and performance purpose of Trim, thank you anyways. I never said Trim is a recovery option, this is just your take from what I said. Your advice of having backups is though a good one.DukeComposed wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 1:23 pmYou're asking cron questions. cron jobs are going to come up. It's important to point out that trim is a hardware health and performance feature of some SSDs, not a recovery option. Whatever you think trim does, I think you should re-educate yourself on that first and foremost. The form, function, and hygiene of file integrity and an effective backup policy is not solely predicated on whether or not you let a disk maintenance cron job run. Focus on fixing the problem -- fear of data loss -- instead of getting distracted by how cron works and hoping that it will save you after an accident.danux wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 10:00 am since I am not familiar with cron jobs, I never use them
All this is needed for knowing, in case I accidentally delete something, if I can still recover it, by knowing that the Trim wasn't yet performed on the SSD.
Understanding how things work is excellent, and a worthy goal! Having had around 35 years of forensic work on computers, there is quite a bit to understand - but primarily that is how files are used / and work on a particular OS.danux wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 1:19 pm Thank you for your input Charles.
I want to learn more about Forensics. I used in the past Testdisk to recover partitions on formated disk (hdd), or I undeleted a few files with it and I used photorec to recover a bunch of files. But recovery on SSDs is something new I want to learn more about. I have bookmarked some sites on SSD forensics, I read a little, but I still have to make time to read them throughly. I don't know about mfg, but I will check.
I see there are 2 situation:
1. files to recover from a SSD on which is installed the OS
2. files to recover from an external SSD only with data
I'm interested more in the second variant, since I run MX from usb stick and store my data on an enclosure ssd. This way, maybe, many from the problems you mentioned are excluded. I just want to know, and be ready, to recover an accidentally deleted file/files from such an external only data SSD. I mean, I will do it fast, not waiting for the Trim to hit me up. I bought a 2230 32GB SSD only for doing some tests in this regard. (to see how much data I can recover in first day from deletion, how much the second day, etc.). I will try then also to recover files from that SSD having MX installed and running it a few hours after deletion of files. Maybe if you delete something accidentally and immediately make an image of the drive, to recover from, it is possible to undo the error.
It's just a project I want to play with.
Thanks for encouragement, man. I saw a few Youtube forensics videos showing how one can see where in memory the bits of a file are. I have to dig more. I would like to mark as SOLVED my question, but it is not my thread and also I don't figure what is that box I have to check. Probably only the one who started the thread can see that box to mark the thread SOLVED.CharlesV wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 2:05 pmUnderstanding how things work is excellent, and a worthy goal! Having had around 35 years of forensic work on computers, there is quite a bit to understand - but primarily that is how files are used / and work on a particular OS.danux wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 1:19 pm Thank you for your input Charles.
I want to learn more about Forensics. I used in the past Testdisk to recover partitions on formated disk (hdd), or I undeleted a few files with it and I used photorec to recover a bunch of files. But recovery on SSDs is something new I want to learn more about. I have bookmarked some sites on SSD forensics, I read a little, but I still have to make time to read them throughly. I don't know about mfg, but I will check.
I see there are 2 situation:
1. files to recover from a SSD on which is installed the OS
2. files to recover from an external SSD only with data
I'm interested more in the second variant, since I run MX from usb stick and store my data on an enclosure ssd. This way, maybe, many from the problems you mentioned are excluded. I just want to know, and be ready, to recover an accidentally deleted file/files from such an external only data SSD. I mean, I will do it fast, not waiting for the Trim to hit me up. I bought a 2230 32GB SSD only for doing some tests in this regard. (to see how much data I can recover in first day from deletion, how much the second day, etc.). I will try then also to recover files from that SSD having MX installed and running it a few hours after deletion of files. Maybe if you delete something accidentally and immediately make an image of the drive, to recover from, it is possible to undo the error.
It's just a project I want to play with.
I wont go as ar as to say that *every* mfg has their own method, but many do. And this firmware of how they reclaim space, how they move files for longevity, etc all comes into play - and remember that SSD's move data around on them NOT just at the trim stage either. I use Samsung EVO''s in most computers, (and started using WD NVME Black's on the last 3), and both Samsung and WD have a VERY different method, but they both move data around so that their performance SSD's have higher life span.
I have done very little forensic's on pocket drives, but again you have the same 'mentality' on GOOD drives.
danux wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 10:59 amThank you so much for this answer. This is gold. It is the exact info I was looking for, clear concise and to the point. I see, that the One who really Knows, doesn't waste words.dolphin_oracle wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 9:38 am anancron runs cron jobs in the hourly, weekly, daily, and monthly schedules based on time stamps from the last run, stored in /var/spool/anacron. if a time stamp doesn't exist, or if a date/time is passed (say, while a PC is off), the jobs will be run within so many minutes of service startup/boot, 5 for daily, 10 for weekly, if I remember correctly.
running missed jobs is an advantage of anacron.
I just checked my /var/spool/anacron/cron.weekly and gives me 20250409. And now I checked again $ cat /var/log/trim.log and MIRACLE, the trim.log file is here, showing me that it trimmed my usb enclosure ssd at 15:22:47. I LOGIN at 12:24 and searched and didn't found the trim.log file just before 12:59:44 (I was lucky I did a w command and kept opened the Terminal, so I was able to recover the time), that means after 35 min since I logged in. What can I take from here? That this is the day of the week at this hour, around 15:00 that my system runs the trim job? I mean, can I expect to see next trim, on next Wednesday at around 15:00 o'clock, even I will multiple power on and power of my system, until then? It looks like a fix date, because otherwise the trim.log file should have been there, when I checked 35 min after login, since you said "if the date is passed, the weekly job will be run within 10 min of service startup".
I am so excited, this is new for me and important to know when the trim take place, to know if I accidentally delete something, if I can recover it, if trim didn't run.
Thank you again. You are the King.
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$ cat /var/log/trim.log
*** Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:00:53 +0300 ***
/home: 1 GiB (1104429056 bytes) trimmed on /dev/loop1
$ sudo cat /var/spool/anacron/cron.weekly
[sudo] password for demo:
20250415
$ sudo cat /etc/cron.weekly/fstrim-mx
#!/bin/bash
# this script is applied to SSD drives for sustained long-term performance and wear-leveling
LOG=/var/log/trim.log
echo "*** $(date -R) ***" >> $LOG
fstrim --all --verbose >> $LOGSorry, I'm new at this (posting). You meant to not post screenshots but to actually write the commands and their outputs? In this case I will edit the post and add just the comands in cause: cat /var/log/trim.log and sudo cat /var/spool/anacron/cron.weekly. With screenshosts its easier, since I can put other useful commands to understand the context, like w or lsblk. To write it all by hand it's a little to muchEadwine Rose wrote: Tue Apr 15, 2025 1:33 pm Please don't post screenshots of code output, they cannot be searched. You can post code on the forum like this:
[code]code output here[/code]
Thanks.
(I am lazy). I think if I let the screenshots, it will not hurt anyone.Eadwine Rose wrote: Tue Apr 15, 2025 1:53 pm Since you executed the commands already that would mean select all, copy and paste, chuck code tags around. Not that much work.
Now I feel dumb. 
Thanks. Now I know.Eadwine Rose wrote: Tue Apr 15, 2025 2:23 pm Thanks, Just need to add the code tags
[code]code output here[/code]