Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:41:14 +0000 From: Alexander Best <arundel@freebsd.org> To: Bruce Cran <bruce@cran.org.uk> Cc: Dag-Erling =?iso-8859-15?Q?Sm=F8rgrav?= <des@des.no>, mav@freebsd.org, Tijl Coosemans <tijl@coosemans.org>, Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Summary: Re: Spin down HDD after disk sync or before power off Message-ID: <20101021134114.GB72290@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <20101021135442.000054c9@unknown> References: <201009161742.24228.tijl@coosemans.org> <201009161619.o8GGJAmv035378@lurza.secnetix.de> <20101018155944.GA12425@freebsd.org> <868w1r92rf.fsf@ds4.des.no> <20101021122110.GA65490@freebsd.org> <86zku77mj6.fsf@ds4.des.no> <20101021135442.000054c9@unknown>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
--9amGYk9869ThD9tj
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
On Thu Oct 21 10, Bruce Cran wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:33:49 +0200
> Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des@des.no> wrote:
>
> > The problem with setting a short idle timeout is that, on a typical
> > laptop or desktop system, you end up spinning the disk down and back
> > up several hundred times a day, which increases power consumption, I/O
> > latency and wear.
>
> Do we think our users are silly enough to set a short timeout of just a
> few minutes? I'd think most would use a setting of 20-30 minutes at
> a minimum. I never did understand why there were so many warnings;
> after all, some laptops even come with a default APM scheme in their
> HDDs that powers the disk down after 7 seconds!
personally i still think something like the attached patch would be nice to
have. there's a chance users might type the following:
'atacontrol spindown device 10'
thinking the timeout value is measured in minutes. although this gets mentioned
in atacontrol(4) it might still be worth reminding the user that he/she is
performing actions which could damage the hardware.
cheers.
alex
>
> --
> Bruce Cran
--
a13x
--9amGYk9869ThD9tj
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="atacontrol.c.diff"
diff --git a/sbin/atacontrol/atacontrol.c b/sbin/atacontrol/atacontrol.c
index 4354ddf..75a131a 100644
--- a/sbin/atacontrol/atacontrol.c
+++ b/sbin/atacontrol/atacontrol.c
@@ -317,6 +317,10 @@ ata_spindown(int fd, const char *dev, const char *arg)
if (arg != NULL) {
tmo = strtoul(arg, NULL, 0);
+ if (tmo < 600)
+ warnx("setting spindown timeout below 10 minutes is \
+ not recommended (see EXAMPLES section of \
+ atacontrol(8))\n");
if (ioctl(fd, IOCATASSPINDOWN, &tmo) < 0)
err(1, "ioctl(IOCATASSPINDOWN)");
} else {
--9amGYk9869ThD9tj--
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20101021134114.GB72290>