Firstly want to say Ive been loving MineOS for quite some time, it seriously makes it super easy to manage my minecraft servers. There are a few suggestions that I have submitted that hopefully will be implemented at some point, but obviously not demanding anything either.
Ive been using MineOS Turnkey on my Laptop for quite some time. Its been running almost non-stop for about 4 years. Not sure how its doing this all so well, but with a modded server it preforms as you would expect a 4 year old mid-ranged name brand laptop would preform. I am working on building a mini-pc dedicated to running a MineOS installation. I already have the parts picked out, but one concern is that I am going to install the OS on my SSD, which would be a bad idea to have the server files on there as well. Seeing as how its going to be loading and writing frequently to the disk I would want to run it on something like a HDD with higher capacity as it would probably contain backup files as well.
After looking into the information on how to do this, I realized I am not quite sure on how to approach this solution in MineOS. I dont really understand where to start either in terms of preforming this on linux (not to say that I know nothing about linux, I have used it… occasionally.)
So, would there be a way during installation or afterwards to install the OS on the SSD, and the server files on the HDD?
MineOs is rather dependendt on it’s directory structure, and that it finds the files it needs in the places it knows. Linux, however, is able to let files and directories have links, something akin to Shortcuts in Windows, but more powerful. With symbolic links (symlinks) you are able to have the real directory on one disk, but also have it included in the directory structure on the directory MineOS expects to find it.
I will most definitely attempt this when the server is built! Ill even update this post. Check back in a month. Thank you very much for your answer, and exactly what I was looking for.
You’ll have to adjust the commands to fit your server, and where your second disk is placed (and what it is named). If you run into problems here are the relevant man pages from linux:
I think I have the commands used avbove right, but I didn’t actually test those on my server;D I have, however, done something of the same when I set my server up at least a year ago…
It is working really well for me. I have one extra trapdoor to avoid since my minecraft archive folder is located on a Windows share though. I have to rewrite a line in the MineOS source files to avoid illegal filenames in the archives. As long as your extra disk is on your linux machine, and formated in a linux filesystem, you do not need to worry about that.
Hm. Not really.
I run of a rather large box in a VM-box, so my MineOS is virtual.
I think I possibly would have gone for a slightly larger SSD (240 GB, or even 512 if I could afford), since 120GB is rather small to contain OS, swapdisk, and other needed files. You can probably survive on it. My Os installation ticks in on 32 GB, but running on a virtual host, I could splash out on giving MineOS 1TB of space alone.
1TB of space for Minecraft servers and such whould be enough, as long as you keep an eye on the number and size of archive copies you have. Just be sure that the Minecraft data disk never gets full. It’s as simple as going in occationally to check on how much diskspace is used, and if needed deleting the oldest archives.
I am not saying you should, I am saying what I would;D
And I agree with you on not using virtual if that is the only thing running, I am because my MineOS server is not the only machine running on my physical server.
The reason I said that I would go for 204GB SSD is that this gives me more headroom for system growth, including profiles, OS updates, space for swapdisk, and other crap that over time collects. I used to go for lover capasity OS disks but grew tired of them filling, and me having to clean up…
With the 1 TB Storage I might use it for Temporary file storage, depending upon how full it gets. Then again, I might just install an external HD and use that for file sharing. You know, getting the most out of what I got, seeing as how it will be on anyway.
Another solution would be to use LVM, since you’re building a system fresh.
LVM is great because with a few commands, you can grow the storage as needed.
I’ve done this on a netbook as a test (not an MC server) and is slick.
It just adds the volume to whatever you attach it to.
If I rebuild my server, I’d do this for /var/games/minecraft.
The advantage to having your server on an SSD means that chunk loading and generation will happen faster, with much less latency than if you store your server. In fact, the reason you give for not using the SSD is exactly the reason you want it on the SSD.
To go back to the SSD reliability question, OCZ claims an endurance of 60TB for your drive (which will be your lower bound, based on SSD and flash research). Assuming that you have a fairly expansive “large” world size in the neighborhood of 5-6GB, even if you re-wrote that amount 10 times a day, your SSD would still last over three years at OCZ’s claimed endurance. A much more typical world size would be in the neighborhood of 500MB, and writes would rarely, if ever, get over 1-2GB per day, assuming it was being used every day. Even at 10GB/day, your SSD would last you over 15 years.
My guess is that, if running Minecraft on your laptop was acceptable, you’ll definitely be much lower on the data use scale.
Thank you for your well written response Nick. This at least takes care of my fears for writing data to the SSD rapidly and freqently. I still would have to worry about Performance degradation. Also, this current server is not one that I have run on the laptop, and would not trust the laptop to run it at all. It actually uses like 2x the RAM starting the thing, and then over time eats up about 500MB every day or so requiring a restart. As much I would like to go with your suggestion, I dont feel confident enough to do it. A 7200 RPM drive is more than enough though.
As for server performance its running beautify, chunks load up pretty quick, and hopping from dimension to dimension only has a slight stutter in comparison to the previous hardware.