From owner-freebsd-hardware Mon Nov 17 05:47:31 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id FAA11928 for hardware-outgoing; Mon, 17 Nov 1997 05:47:31 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hardware) Received: from DonaldBurr.dyn.ml.org (206-18-115-39.la.inreach.net [206.18.115.39]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id FAA11911 for ; Mon, 17 Nov 1997 05:47:25 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dburr@POBoxes.com) Received: from DonaldBurr.DonaldBurr.dyn.ml.org (DonaldBurr.DonaldBurr.dyn.ml.org [192.160.60.1]) by DonaldBurr.dyn.ml.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id FAA02395; Mon, 17 Nov 1997 05:48:54 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dburr@POBoxes.com) Message-ID: X-Mailer: XFMail 1.1 [p0] on FreeBSD Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <4oPvCRC00YUx0kJUA0@andrew.cmu.edu> Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 05:46:41 -0800 (PST) Organization: Starfleet Command From: Donald Burr To: Timothy J Kniveton Subject: RE: HD Spin-down Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- My secret spy satellite informs me that on 17-Nov-97, Timothy J Kniveton wrote: >Does anyone have comments about a good way to get the HD to spin down >into power saving mode? I enabled it in my BIOS, but found that the >system's periodic syncs caused this to not work. So then I changed >kern.update to be some ridiculously high value around 10 hours. > >Today I found that this was a _really_ bad idea, when I was toying >with my sound drivers and the system froze. I lost a lot of info; >luckily most of it was easily replaceable. > >So can anyone tell me the "right" way to do this? thanks. I recently reserached this because of a similar problem: I wanted my notebook computer's HD to not keep spinning up (so that the APM power management stuff could actually do some good). Unfortunately I found there's really no good way of doing this except, as you say, upping the kernel update thingie. So I did that, and I trained myself to type "sync;sync;sync" at the shell prompt every x minutes (or whenver I did something major like write my next assignment for c++ class). - --- Donald Burr - Ask me for my PGP key | PGP: Your WWW HomePage: http://DonaldBurr.base.org/ ICQ #1347455 | right to Address: P.O. Box 91212, Santa Barbara, CA 93190-1212 | 'Net privacy. Phone: (805) 957-9666 FAX: (800) 492-5954 | USE IT. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBNHBLQ/jpixuAwagxAQGtOwP/Ulo1IxNQBBjHaWjF7MG1FOTjsrRYUcOz fuR3YTxz4q/JE+SXL1cV7rdJXXzLMbEpdgiSno3SQxzj106jFjPpH/G3lasdhW56 UH+3jWt40+kFZOUdeVct4MfpF2R7vtlsmCI4RGjyaGNVOuvhWRz8yevrtyWUZ85W gZIJILLIfMA= =rwfu -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----