[ltp] RH7.1 on Thinkpad 240: HD doesn't go on standby...

[Tino Keitel]

On Wednesday,  3. October 2001 13:47, Ralf Mehlan wrote:
> No, just ext2.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-linux-thinkpad@bm-soft.com
> [mailto:owner-linux-thinkpad@bm-soft.com]On Behalf Of Dr. Edmund Weitz
> Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 12:02 PM
> To: linux-thinkpad@www.bm-soft.com
> Subject: Re: [ltp] RH7.1 on Thinkpad 240: HD doesn't go on standby...
>
>
> Are you using reiserfs? This might be the cause. See their FAQ.
>
> "Ralf Mehlan" <rmehlan@supplitel.com> writes:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am using RedHat 7.1 on a Thinkpad 240. I am trying to make the harddisk
> > spin down when on battery to maximize battery time. However, it never
>
> spins
>
> > down.
> >
> > I prevent starting the services anacron, crond, atd at boot time. When I
> > force "/sbin/hdparm -S1 /dev/hda6" it does spin down, but only to wake up
> > again after a few seconds (even if I am not doing anything).
> >
> > Where can I see what process is continously accessing the disk? What do I
> > have to do to stop it? Something about bdflush?

AFAIK some HDs flush their write cache immediately to the disk. Of course 
they will spin up if that happens. Since the update thread syncs the disks at 
least every 30 seconds (man 8 update), the drive will spin up and down every 
few seconds if you use hdparm -S1.

You can search for the init script in your init.d directory that runs the 
"update" command (checkroot.sh on my Debian system) and append "-s 300 -f 
300" to this line. If your HD will stay spun down for at least a few minutes 
now, remove the "-s 300 -f 300" and install "noflushd" ( 
http://noflushd.sourceforge.net ).

If the "-s 300 -f 300" doesn't help (you can remove it now and reboot), there 
must be another process that causes the disk to spin up. Go to the text 
console and kill all processes that run in the background. Everytime after 
you have killed one process, listen to your hard disk if it still spins up a 
few seconds after it spun down.

In either case I suggest you to install noflushd if you want to maximize the 
down times of you hard disk.

Tino

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