zram-init VS log2ram

I found a github issue here that seemed to explain things.

Also, sys-block/zram-init::gentoo Scripts to support compressed swap devices or ramdisks with zRAM (https://github.com/vaeth/zram-init/)

IIRC zswap is zram used for swap, so as long as your kernel has zram support, you can use zswap. You can use zram with zramctl from util-linux. However, there is also the sys-block/zram-init package: it's a wrapper around zramctl which offers an openrc script to automatically create zram devices at boot. It also provides configuration for zswap. Configuration is in /etc/conf.d/zram-init.

Reducing logging, logging to ram and writing to the sdcard once a day helps longevity a lot, especially with quality sd cards.

99% of the time it's the verbose logging of application servers that is the culprit of sdcard failures.

https://github.com/azlux/log2ram

I always use this: https://github.com/azlux/log2ram

If you've got other issues then it's quite likely that lots of small writes from logging and similar has worn out the SD card, mounting the SD card as read only or installing log2ram could prevent it happening to another SD card.

> writing permanent its log files and swap partition

If this is the problem, the solutions are no swap and log2ram https://github.com/azlux/log2ram

I also noticed that Armbian logs to a ramdisk. I didn't investigate the implementation and if its contents survive a reboot.

The only real problems for me are that the SD card will eventually fail no matter what (I mean, much sooner than a SDD or HDD) and that there are basically no Pis at sale at a reasonable price. As a platform it is nearly dead.

For Pi-hole, I have an Rpi Zero with $10 Usb-to-Ethernet adapter, SD-card barely written (with Log2Ram) to avoid wear. Running about 3 years now almost unattended (besides security updates).

In addition to the other helpful suggestions you’ve received, look into using Log2Ram. It does what it sounds like, puts log writes in ram and then writes them to disk on a slower cadence that doesn’t work your SD card that much.

https://github.com/azlux/log2ram

Log files are a bit trickier. I want these to stick around between reboots, so just storing them on a ramdisk wouldn't really work. Thankfully, log2ram solves this problem. Written primarily for Raspberry Pi machines, it works fine on x86-64 laptops. This stores /var/log in RAM but will sync the contents to disk from time to time, ideal for our needs.