Zram swap instead of dphys-swapfile?

[spitfire]

Building up on my other idea all of the supported (64-bit) devices have at least 512MB RAM why not switch from dphys-swapfile to zram swap unit from zram-tools? It seems to be doing ok for me with default settings even on the zero2 and 3A I've been using.

[spitfire]

If someone is interested on how to do it on existing system, all you need to do is run these commands as root:
apt install zram-tools -y && dphys-swapfile swapoff && dphys-swapfile uninstall && apt purge -y dphys-swapfile && apt autoremove -y

[jayofelony]

I like this idea, but it will use 60% of memory by default? Isn't that a lot, how long does booting into AI take on the 02w? Auto update installing takes up quite the resources.

[spitfire]

By default it takes (up to) 50% IIRC and this isn't occupying RAM as long as there's nothing in swap. We could also change the compression algorithm to zest (better compression, worse speed), I think even 02 can take it. I'll try and see how quickly does it start on zero2

[spitfire]

After restarting from MANU to AUTO mode it took ~50 seconds to get to AI mode, with quite a few plugins loaded:

[2024-01-17 19:49:25,156] [WARNING] restarting in AUTO mode ...
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,585] [INFO] [hashie] plugin loaded
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,594] [INFO] [Fix_Services] plugin loaded.
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,595] [INFO] net-pos plugin loaded.
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,596] [INFO] [webgpsmap]: plugin loaded
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,596] [INFO] memtemp plugin loaded.
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,597] [INFO] aircrackonly plugin loaded
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,598] [INFO] [HandshakesDL] plugin loaded
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,599] [INFO] webcfg: Plugin loaded.
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,599] [INFO] [update] plugin loaded.
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,600] [INFO] AUTO-BACKUP: Successfully loaded.
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,600] [INFO] display-password loaded
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,604] [INFO] Logtail plugin loaded.
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,614] [INFO] Session-stats plugin loaded.
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,607] [INFO] grid plugin loaded.
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,606] [INFO] [hashie] Starting batch conversion of pcap files
[2024-01-17 19:49:33,672] [INFO] BT-TETHER: Successfully loaded ...
(...)
[2024-01-17 19:50:18,626] [INFO] [AI] saving model to /root/brain.nn ...
(...)
[2024-01-17 19:52:23,788] [INFO] [update] extracting /usr/local/src/pwnagotchi-bookworm/pwnagotchi-bookworm_2.7.1.zip to /usr/local/src/pwnagotchi-bookworm ...
[2024-01-17 19:52:27,930] [INFO] [update] installing pwnagotchi-bookworm ...

on a zero2 with zramswap ALGO changed to zstd in /etc/default/zramswap.

After being loaded to AI mode it updated to the latest version without issues.

[jayofelony]

Ok, I'm building an image with zram-tools instead of dphys-swapfile. Building using f2fs won´t work, as the base image is ext4. So if you really want that, you have to do it manually.

[spitfire]

a different approach could be to keep the swap file (dphys-swapfile), but make zramswap higher priority, so the swapfile on sd would be used as a last resort. /etc/default/zramswap has an option for that. This is zero2 after AI booted up