Date: Fri, 1 Dec 1995 23:48:23 +1100 From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org, sycheng@cis.ufl.edu Subject: Re: (fwd) [Wanted] Tools to disable SEGATE HD power saving mode Message-ID: <199512011248.XAA17281@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
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> Is there any tool which I can use like Linux's "hdparm" to disable
> the power saving feature of SEGATE hard drive ?
No but, cron activity might be enough to keep the drive awake, or you
could try something like:
#!/bin/sh
while :; do sleep 60; echo -n 1; done >/var/run/nodoz
Some Linuxer's used the program in the enclosed news to do the reverse
before hdparm was in common use.
Bruce
Article 31724 of comp.os.linux.misc:
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From: becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov (Donald Becker)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.admin
Subject: Re: Green-PC disk doesn't powerdown with Linux: why?
Date: 24 Dec 1994 12:44:30 -0500
Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center -- Greenbelt, Maryland USA
Lines: 121
Message-ID: <3dhmlu$fqn@beowulf.gsfc.nasa.gov>
References: <ARNHOLT.94Dec11112806@miata.mayo.edu>
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Xref: godzilla.zeta.org.au comp.os.linux.misc:31724 comp.os.linux.help:71299 comp.os.linux.admin:20667
In article <ARNHOLT.94Dec11112806@miata.mayo.edu>,
Jeff Arnholt <arnholt@autobahn.mayo.edu> wrote:
>I purchased a green motherboard and processor with the ambition of both
>reducing my electric bills and being environmentally conscious. Under
>DOS, the hard drive spins down after 30 minutes of non-use (having
>set the BIOS to do this). Linux kept the drive spinning all night.
>Other than an aberrant 'cron', what could be causing this activity?
There has been some misinformation in answer to this thread.
o The mechanism to spin down the disk when idle resides in the disk drive
itself. Most modern (post-1991) IDE drives support this feature. Unlike
most other "Green" features which require runtime OS support or additional
motherboard chipset hardware, the BIOS merely sends the StandByTimer command
to the drive. When the drive hasn't been accessed in 5*n seconds it
spins itself down.
o I've been using a trivial user-level program to do the same thing for two
years. Mark Lord has an improved version included with his IDE package.
o The dirty pages in the buffer cache of a traditional UNIX are flushed to
disk every 30 seconds by the 'update' program doing a 'sync()' function
call. Linux 1.0 followed this model, but Linux 1.1.* uses the modern
'bdflush' method of continuously dribbling dirty pages to disk. This
shrinks the time window when file data may be lost if the machine is shut
off and avoids losing interactive response every 30 seconds when doing large
writes.
o *Never* kill the update/bdflush process. Instead remove the source of the
writes. Typical hidden writes are:
- 'cron' in Slackware is configured to write a file in /tmp
every minute. You should disable 'cron' completely unless you are
using it.
- Emacs auto-saves modified buffers. Check the variables auto-save-*.
- Some kernel/drive combinations generate a warning message about
the interrupt when the drive spins down. If you log that message
with syslog, the disk immediately spins back up :^<.
I'm typing this in bed with a laptop that spins down the disk down soon
after I get my usual set of program started.
/* diskdown.c: Shut down a IDE disk if there is no activity.
Written by Donald Becker (becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov) for Linux.
The version released under the Gnu Public License, incorportated herein
by reference.
This program must be run as 'root' or SUID 'root'. It takes a single
optional parameter, the number of seconds to wait before going into
standby mode.
This program enables the spin-down feature which is standard in all
modern IDE disks. A user-level program is a poor way to do this, but
I got tired of patching it into my own kernels and I didn't feel I
could maintain an Official Kernel Feature.
This program, when combined with disks that are slow to spin up, may
cause Linux kernels before 1.1.53 to log an error when the disk
doesn't respond immediately. The kernel then resets the controller, and
by that time the disk has spun up. One other annoying misfeature with
older kernels is that the disk drive posts an interrupt when it goes
into spin-down mode, the kernel doesn't know what the interrupt is
from, and 'syslog' immediately spins the disk back up. The quick,
sleazy solution is to configure 'syslog' to ignore those messages.
The long-term solution is to upgrade to a kernel later then 1.1.53.
*/
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <asm/io.h>
#define IDE_BASE 0x1f0
#define IDE_SECTOR_CNT 0x1f2
#define IDE_CMD 0x1f7
#define PORTIO_ON 1
enum ide_cmd {StandbyImmediate=0xe0, IdleImmediate=0xe1, StandbyTimer=0xe2,
IdleTimer=0xe3,};
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int timeout;
if (ioperm(IDE_BASE, 8, PORTIO_ON)) {
perror("diskdown:ioperm()");
fprintf(stderr, "diskdown: You must run this program as root.\n");
return 1;
}
if (argc > 1) {
timeout = atoi(argv[1]);
if (timeout < 10)
timeout = 60;
}
{
int old_cnt = inb(IDE_SECTOR_CNT);
/*printf("Old sector count: %d.\n", old_cnt);*/
/* The timeout period is in units of 5 seconds, up to an index of 240.
Values over 240 (20 minutes) set vendor-specific timeouts. */
outb((timeout + 4)/5,IDE_SECTOR_CNT);
outb(StandbyTimer, IDE_CMD);
outb(old_cnt,IDE_SECTOR_CNT);
}
return 0;
}
/*
* Local variables:
* compile-command: "gcc -O6 -o diskdown diskdown.c"
* comment-column: 32
* End:
*/
--
Donald Becker becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov
USRA-CESDIS, Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences.
Code 930.5, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. 20771
301-286-0882 http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/people/becker/whoiam.html
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