Unclear status of trim.

qk4-li3

Spouse's laptop Asus E406SA which appears to have 64GB eMMC. I wanted to check if trim is enabled, so with sudo systemctl status fstrim.timer I get this:

● fstrim.timer - Discard unused filesystem blocks once a week
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/fstrim.timer; disabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (waiting) since Sun 2026-01-25 07:03:18 EET; 6h ago
Invocation: 01ae279bad6f4a649affd90d0a2b288f
Trigger: Mon 2026-01-26 01:01:30 EET; 11h left
Triggers: ● fstrim.service
Docs: man:fstrim

tammi 25 07:03:18 e406 systemd[1]: Started fstrim.timer - Discard unused filesystem blocks once a week.

I find this confusing when it says loaded, active, disabled, but also active(waiting), Started fstrim.timer.
So which one is it? Do I have to enable trim manually?

trinajstica

do this sudo systemctl enable fstrim.timer
and timer will be enabled forever

qk4-li3

trinajstica So are you saying that I must enable it manually because there's a word "disabled" in (/usr/lib/systemd/system/fstrim.timer; disabled; preset: enabled), even when it says "loaded" and "active" and all those other things, time to(?) trigger etc. elsewhere?
Sorry, still a bit confused about that.

BuzzPCSOS

qk4-li3 I am guessing that you installed Solus from an iso that was released before 29th November 2025. The current Solus iso should enable the preset and the timer by default, before that the timer was not enabled by default. For best reliability and speed when using an SSD both preset and timer should be enabled.

qk4-li3

BuzzPCSOS both preset and timer should be enabled

Ok, it's now starting to make sense (a little bit), so fstrim.timer is disabled and preset is enabled. I think I now accept that I must manually enable that parameter.

BuzzPCSOS I am guessing that you installed Solus from an iso that was released before 29th November 2025

Oh yes, this was years ago, even before The Great Recession Of Solus (memberberries).
Thank you @BuzzPCSOS and Thank you @trinajstica both!

Afterthought (oh, bugger!): Should I even trim eMMC. Is eMMC just a sh***y SSD. How it copes with trim?

BuzzPCSOS

qk4-li3 eMMC can still benefit from trim.
If possible consider upgrading to an SSD which will return much faster read and write performance.
Good luck and welcome to Solus.

Harvey

It already is enabled you do not need to do anything:

❯ systemctl status fstrim.timer
● fstrim.timer - Discard unused filesystem blocks once a week
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/fstrim.timer; disabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (waiting) since Sun 2026-01-25 09:39:15 AEDT; 22h ago
Invocation: 77789379fddf4eeb97289eba3a7aebfc
Trigger: Mon 2026-02-02 01:25:24 AEDT; 6 days left
Triggers: ● fstrim.service
Docs: man:fstrim

❯ journalctl -u fstrim.service --since "4 weeks ago"
Jan 05 00:54:06 sokar systemd[1]: Starting fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab...
Jan 05 00:56:10 sokar fstrim[274726]: /: 967 GiB (1038307344384 bytes) trimmed on /dev/nvme0n1p3
Jan 05 00:56:10 sokar systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Deactivated successfully.
Jan 05 00:56:10 sokar systemd[1]: Finished fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab.
Jan 05 00:56:10 sokar systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Consumed 2.205s CPU time, 16.9M memory peak.
-- Boot 8e963d4cf1154c48a5a7b814d12b0f7b --
Jan 12 00:18:12 sokar systemd[1]: Starting fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab...
Jan 12 00:20:17 sokar fstrim[473165]: /: 923.2 GiB (991314870272 bytes) trimmed on /dev/nvme0n1p3
Jan 12 00:20:17 sokar systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Deactivated successfully.
Jan 12 00:20:17 sokar systemd[1]: Finished fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab.
Jan 12 00:20:17 sokar systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Consumed 2.196s CPU time, 16.3M memory peak.
-- Boot 250662429c34437fa162c194d42ecdcf --
Jan 19 01:05:59 sokar systemd[1]: Starting fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab...
Jan 19 01:08:00 sokar fstrim[726023]: /: 642.8 GiB (690181115904 bytes) trimmed on /dev/nvme0n1p3
Jan 19 01:08:00 sokar systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Deactivated successfully.
Jan 19 01:08:00 sokar systemd[1]: Finished fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab.
Jan 19 01:08:00 sokar systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Consumed 2.296s CPU time, 108M memory peak.
-- Boot 01ac82b6091b45dc8248d4e7cc8450f0 --
Jan 26 00:45:10 sokar systemd[1]: Starting fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab...
Jan 26 00:47:17 sokar fstrim[131208]: /: 832.4 GiB (893820280832 bytes) trimmed on /dev/nvme0n1p3
Jan 26 00:47:17 sokar systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Deactivated successfully.
Jan 26 00:47:17 sokar systemd[1]: Finished fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab.
Jan 26 00:47:17 sokar systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Consumed 2.329s CPU time, 20.6M memory peak.

BuzzPCSOS

Harvey It already is enabled you do not need to do anything:

Ok so now I am looking for clarification. On my system trim preset and timer both show as enabled.
How is trim timer running trim if it is disabled? As shown in your screen shots.

qk4-li3

duck.ai tells me it's ok to trim eMMC, so it is what it is.

Harvey It already is enabled you do not need to do anything:

...and if this man tells me something I think there are benefits at listening.
(dang it, I knew it... even if I really didn't)
Big Thank you @Harvey for this and for wetting my appetite to inspect those journals (or whatchamacallit), even if I doubt I understand much of them. Perhaps something.

qk4-li3

BuzzPCSOS If possible consider upgrading to an SSD which will return much faster read and write performance

It's girlfriend's "not cheap but non-expensive" laptop eMMC soldered to the board. Ok, it's a bit cheap and shi**y, but you got to use what you got. And hey it works!

BuzzPCSOS Good luck and welcome to Solus

umm... Thanks. Hey, I've been around! 😆

qk4-li3

BuzzPCSOS eMMC can still benefit from trim

Good link. More trustworthy than AI.
So... they've figured it out already over ten years ago.

Harvey

BuzzPCSOS

Probably because you ran the command to enable it, at one point in Solus's history it was not running by default and people used to manually enable it.

The distro preset is enabled so it runs:

disabled; preset: enabled

You enabled it so you will have:

enabled; preset: enabled

The difference is technical not practically different.

BuzzPCSOS

Harvey Thank you for your explanation. I guess this is a clever way of enabling regular trim optimisation on previous Solus versions that were not running it. Nice.
I learn something new every day, thanks 😃

BuzzPCSOS

For anyone requiring further detail, run systemctl list-timers --all which should indicate FSTRIM events.

brent

BuzzPCSOS this look normal? (first time I've used this command)

BuzzPCSOS

brent That's what I've got. I deactivated the fstrim timer with sudo systemctl disable fstrim.timer so my system trim is now using the distro preset only for trim. I am sure that what @Harvey said is correct and the two methods of enabling trim are identical. I wanted to be able to see regular trim working on the preset alone before removing the command to set fstrim.timer from my notes. No one else should need to do this.
It certainly has been a learning experience for me.

brent

BuzzPCSOS It certainly has been a learning experience for me.

I've been following. Like just following. You were setting trim manually (before Solus implemented this internally) and you taught me to do it. In the end were you afraid to have two different timers set, as in a redundancy?

PS--thanks for getting back.
PSS--to any reader picture is of stock 4.8 with systemctl list-timers --alloutput, and no interference from me

BuzzPCSOS

brent In the end were you afraid to have two different timers set, as in a redundancy?

No fear. I will be very surprised if everything doesn't work as it is expected to.
I keep a script which installs all my favourite programs, sets up VirtualBox, enables fstrim.timer and other stuff. I work on the logic that generally it is easier to wipe and rewrite than try and fix the mess I have made, the script does a lot of the heavy work on a clean install and makes it easier to consistently get the programs I like.
Once I have personal confidence that the distro preset works the way I expect it to then I will take the fstrim.timer line out of my script. I don't like unnecessary duplication.
It's just the way I do things. Nothing more. As I said before, "no one else needs to do this" 😃👍

brent

BuzzPCSOS I don't like unnecessary duplication

that's what I was getting at. I really don't like unnecessary duplication either, especially files, programs, scripts etc. I actually invest time weeding that stuff out 🙂