Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:07:16 -0800 From: Jeremy Chadwick <freebsd@jdc.parodius.com> To: Michael BlackHeart <amdmiek@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: AHCI powersaving issue Message-ID: <20120125220716.GA39307@icarus.home.lan> In-Reply-To: <CA%2BAz77N-8_MwAsCSU1FFUtK%2B2626XCOA9MPY=GX5LNwyQsKTPA@mail.gmail.com> References: <CA%2BAz77N-8_MwAsCSU1FFUtK%2B2626XCOA9MPY=GX5LNwyQsKTPA@mail.gmail.com>
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On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 07:23:36PM +0400, Michael BlackHeart wrote: > Hello, I've a trouble with new achi driver on currently 9 release, but > it was the same on 8-stable. I've have an: > > smartctl -a /dev/ada0 > > === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === > Model Family: Western Digital Scorpio Blue Serial ATA > Device Model: WDC WD3200BEVT-22A23T0 > Serial Number: WD-WXL1AB086780 > > And there's an idle state disabled by wdidle3 v1.05. > > But it constantly goes to power saving mode. I can see it 'cos I'm > hearing a sound of spinning up HDD and SMART param 193 > Load_Cycle_Count rises VERY frequently, something insane about one per > few minutes. > > This thing solves the problem: camcontrol cmd ada0 -a "EF 85 00 00 00 > 00 00 00 00 00 00 00" and everything goes fine from that moment. > > Output with disabled APM. > camcontrol identify ada0 > pass0: <WDC WD3200BEVT-22A23T0 01.01A01> ATA-8 SATA 2.x device > pass0: 300.000MB/s transfers (SATA 2.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes) > > protocol ATA/ATAPI-8 SATA 2.x > device model WDC WD3200BEVT-22A23T0 > firmware revision 01.01A01 > serial number WD-WXL1AB086780 > WWN 50014ee6565acc41 > cylinders 16383 > heads 16 > sectors/track 63 > sector size logical 512, physical 512, offset 0 > LBA supported 268435455 sectors > LBA48 supported 625142448 sectors > PIO supported PIO4 > DMA supported WDMA2 UDMA6 > media RPM 5400 > > Feature Support Enabled Value Vendor > read ahead yes yes > write cache yes yes > flush cache yes yes > overlap no > Tagged Command Queuing (TCQ) no no > Native Command Queuing (NCQ) yes 32 tags > SMART yes yes > microcode download yes yes > security yes no > power management yes yes > advanced power management yes no 254/0xFE > automatic acoustic management yes no 254/0xFE 128/0x80 > media status notification no no > power-up in Standby no no > write-read-verify no no > unload yes yes > free-fall no no > data set management (TRIM) no > > And finally i've got in /boot/loader.conf: > hint.ahcich.0.pm_level=0 > > I'd like to know how to permanently disable this APM mode because it's > killing my HDD. This "problem" has been reported to the list before, on other models of drives (some models of WD Green drives, for example). The drive is excessively parking its heads based upon what Western Digital implemented in their firmware. Western Digital goes over this in detail in a FAQ entry, except they go completely bonkers and start blaming Linux syslogd and other nonsensical things (that is to say: I understand what they're getting at, they're saying that syslogd is causing the drive to spin up when it attempts to write data to log files -- so what? This is normal. Any kind of write I/O would do this, not just syslogd); it seems their explanation tries to divert from the truth, which is that the drives are aggressively parking heads. FAQ entries: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5357/ http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3263/ You will find in these FAQs that alternately you can use "a utility" to try and work around this issue by setting the value to the maximum duration (not disable, but maximum duration). I doubt this works, as I believe it just sets the IDLE or STANDBY timers to their maximum value (keep reading). You should be aware that the WDIDLE3 utility does not work on some models of drives, and is known (in very rare/odd cases) to break drives permanently. Given that WD in their FAQs haven't mentioned support of the Scorpio Blue (this is a 2.5" laptop drive and intended for such environments), I would not have run this utility. The "cryptic command" you mention: camcontrol cmd ada0 -a "EF 85 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00" Issues ATA command 0xEF (SET FEATURES), with subcommand 0x85. Subcommand 0x85 is defined per ATA8-ACS revision 4a as: "Subcommand code 85h disables Advanced Power Management. Subcommand 85h may not be implemented on all devices that implement SET FEATURES subcommand 05h." The last part of the sentence I wanted folks to see, since the behaviour varies from drive to drive, vendor to vendor, firmware to firmware. I realise 0x85 works for you, but since this is an archived mailing list... Anyway, continuing: There does not appear to be a way using camcontrol, aside from the "cryptic command", to disable APM on an ATA device. Readers are very likely to point out the idle/standby commands of camcontrol, but those issue IDLE_IMMEDIATE (0xe1) and STANDBY_IMMEDIATE (0xe0). Readers are also likely to point out that "these commands support timers (-t)". Use of -t causes the utility to, respectively, issue IDLE (0xe3) and STANDBY (0xe2) commands instead. The timer value is passed directly to the drive itself (yes, the timer stuff is truly ATA-level). None of these will disable drive APM. Per above spec, section 4.5, "Advanced Power Management is independent of the Standby timer setting". As for your /boot/loader.conf setting of: hint.ahcich.0.pm_level=0 This has absolutely nothing to do with drive-level APM. This controls whether or not you want your AHCI controller to honour power management capability at the *controller* level. It has nothing to do with disks. You should remove this setting. So how do you solve this problem? At this present time the best choice would be to drop a simple script into /usr/local/etc/rc.d that issues the "cryptic command". Yes, camcontrol could be extended to support a command like "camcontrol setfeature disable-apm /dev/XXX", but someone would need to write the code. I could implement this , except in the case of SET FEATURES, FreeBSD is missing proper definitions for the subcommand values in src/sys/sys/ata.h (for example 0x85 is not there). This makes it more difficult to provide a simple userland patch/diff, and instead requires both userland and kernel (include files) tinkering. You can see the list of commands in that .h file, look around line 347 (all the indented entries after #define ATA_SETFEATURES). We should really go through that file and make it match the ATA8-ACS spec as best as possible. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc@parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, US | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP 4BD6C0CB |
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