Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2010 05:45:57 -0700 From: Garrett Cooper <gcooper@FreeBSD.org> To: Alexander Best <arundel@freebsd.org> Cc: Bruce Cran <bruce@cran.org.uk>, Tijl Coosemans <tijl@coosemans.org>, Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, mav@freebsd.org, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Dag=2DErling_Sm=F8rgrav?= <des@des.no> Subject: Re: Summary: Re: Spin down HDD after disk sync or before power off Message-ID: <AANLkTi=hvkXvAkv68jjpJSKSKZ5a-0yn=Vje4ZjSPc=F@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20101027124113.GA6206@freebsd.org> 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> <20101021134114.GB72290@freebsd.org> <20101027124113.GA6206@freebsd.org>
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On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 5:41 AM, Alexander Best <arundel@freebsd.org> wrote=
:
> On Thu Oct 21 10, Alexander Best wrote:
>> On Thu Oct 21 10, Bruce Cran wrote:
>> > On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:33:49 +0200
>> > Dag-Erling Sm=F8rgrav <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? =A0I'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 me=
ntioned
>> in atacontrol(4) it might still be worth reminding the user that he/she =
is
>> performing actions which could damage the hardware.
>
> i just stumbled upon PR 144770, where a somebody seems to have mistaken t=
he
> spindown value for minutes instead of seconds. so i really think we shoul=
d have
> this warning in atacontrol!
>
> +1 from brucec, if i understood him correctly.
>
> another possibility would be of course changing the spindown value from s=
econds
> to minutes. imo this seems very reasonable, because measuring spindown ti=
me in
> seconds is too fine grained and not intuitive. just like specifying the
> 'shutdown -p XX' delay in microseconds would not be useful. ;)
>
> cheers.
> alex
>
>>
>> cheers.
>> alex
>>
>> >
>> > --
>> > Bruce Cran
>>
>> --
>> a13x
>
>> 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 *a=
rg)
>>
>> =A0 =A0 =A0 if (arg !=3D NULL) {
>> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 tmo =3D strtoul(arg, NULL, 0);
>> + =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 if (tmo < 600)
>> + =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 warnx("setting spindown timeou=
t below 10 minutes is \
>> + =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 not recommended (s=
ee EXAMPLES section of \
>> + =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 atacontrol(8))\n")=
;
>> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 if (ioctl(fd, IOCATASSPINDOWN, &tmo) < 0)
>> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 err(1, "ioctl(IOCATASSPINDOW=
N)");
>> =A0 =A0 =A0 } else {
Why not just be consistent with other interfaces and provide
suffixes for the values to parse out integral times (i.e. 1 [second],
1m, 2h)? As long as the value is behavior is properly documented in
the manpage (and potentially as examples in the usage message), that
should be enough.
Thanks,
-Garrett
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