SD card write cycles

[chrisw99]

Hi all,
I recently setup my first Pi with Retropie and filled it with logs.
One question I have - SD cards have a limited number of write cycles before they die. Which is fine on a Retropie system as it's nearly all read only once setup apart from the occasional saving of config etc.
However, I have noticed a lot of the logs in /var/log are constantly being written to by various things...

Nov 10 11:34:20 retropie rngd[347]: stats: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Monobit: 0
Nov 10 11:34:20 retropie rngd[347]: stats: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Poker: 0
Nov 10 11:34:20 retropie rngd[347]: stats: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Runs: 0
Nov 10 11:34:20 retropie rngd[347]: stats: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Long run: 0
Nov 10 11:34:20 retropie rngd[347]: stats: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Continuous run: 0
Nov 10 11:34:20 retropie rngd[347]: stats: HRNG source speed: (min=267.797; avg=518.543; max=542.158)Kibits/s
Nov 10 11:34:20 retropie rngd[347]: stats: FIPS tests speed: (min=5.365; avg=16.024; max=18.810)Mibits/s
Nov 10 11:34:20 retropie rngd[347]: stats: Lowest ready-buffers level: 2
Nov 10 11:34:20 retropie rngd[347]: stats: Entropy starvations: 0
Nov 10 11:34:20 retropie rngd[347]: stats: Time spent starving for entropy: (min=0; avg=0.000; max=0)us

Is this a worry for the longevity of the SD card, or am I worrying needlessly?

[mitu]

@chrisw99 If you scroll up, you'll probably see:

Nov 10 11:34:20 retropie CRON[347]: (root) CMD (   cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)

It's a script that runs every hour, it's not continuous.

[chrisw99]

@mitu

Thanks for replying.
That was just one example in the logs. There are lots more things being written... with wifi drops and VPN resets etc...

Nov 11 06:01:42 retropie dhcpcd[643]: wlan0: carrier lost
Nov 11 06:01:42 retropie avahi-daemon[366]: Withdrawing address record for 192.168.0.60 on wlan0.
Nov 11 06:01:42 retropie avahi-daemon[366]: Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface wlan0.IPv4 with address 192.168.0.60.
Nov 11 06:01:42 retropie avahi-daemon[366]: Interface wlan0.IPv4 no longer relevant for mDNS.

Nov 11 09:32:09 retropie ovpn-chris[645]: TLS: soft reset sec=0 bytes=13999/-1 pkts=355/0
Nov 11 09:32:09 retropie ovpn-chris[645]: VERIFY OK: depth=1, C=US, ST=FL, L=Winter Park, O=IPVanish, OU=IPVanish VPN, CN=IPVanish CA, emailAddress=support@ipvanish.com
Nov 11 09:32:09 retropie ovpn-chris[645]: VERIFY X509NAME OK: C=US, ST=FL, L=Winter Park, O=IPVanish, OU=IPVanish VPN, CN=man-c02.ipvanish.com, emailAddress=support@ipvanish.com

It was more a generic question about the lifecycle of an SD card if it's in a Pi as there always seems to be stuff being written even when idle.

[mitu]

@chrisw99 said in SD card write cycles:

It was more a generic question about the lifecycle of an SD card if it's in a Pi as there always seems to be stuff being written even when idle.

Things get written to logs when events happen - it's not an issue to cause excessive write tearing. Unless you have a problem which gets logged continuously in the logs (such as under-voltage warnings), the normal operation on a Pi will not negatiely impact the negatively the sdcard lifetime.

You could configure logging to RAM instead of persistent storage (with something like Log4Ram) if you wish.