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Date: Mon, 01 Apr 96 14:26:29 PST
From: "Brett Glass" <Brett_Glass@ccgate.infoworld.com>
Message-Id: <9603018284.AA828400543@ccgate.infoworld.com>
To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Hacked kernel with option to disable "green" mode
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> Disabling "green" mode is probably not the cannonically correct
> soloution.

No, but it's an important feature to have available. While it's necessary
to have the OS "deal with it" when the drive spins down, it's also
extremely useful (especially on a multitasking OS with virtual memory) to
be able to tell the drive NOT to spin down. Since this involves issuing
low-level disk controller commands, it's properly implemented either as a
kernel option or as a privileged utility. There's no ioctl to issue a
controller command (should there be?), so the code has to go in the kernel
for now.

> The probably correct soloution would be to recognize
> the mode is active (spindle motor status query maybe?) and deal
> with it.

This should be incorporated as well -- so that users COULD let the drive
spin down (e.g. on a laptop). The idea of clock-interrupt-driven polling is
a good one, since it would let other tasks run. With 2.0.1-RELEASE, you
can't even type on the keyboard while waiting for a drive to spin up. And
on this system, IP packets were being dropped, and the serial buffers on
the system were overflowing due to incoming PPP traffic! Not good.

--Brett