Damn Small Linux - Not!

[IDC]Dragon · Joined: 22 Apr 2006 Posts: 41 Location: Hannover, Germany

My home server should run 24/7 for availability, but won't have much to do. It should spindown the disk when idle, to save energy and wear. (The system itself runs from a CF card, to make this more likely, and that's why I picked DSL-N, and an EPIA board.)

How can I teach that to the SATA disk (Seagate ST3500641AS) ? I hope our kernel is young enough to support this, or can be updated, hdparm gives me disturbing ioctl errors. Google didn't really tell me what's required.

If the idle timeout is persistent in the disk, I could maybe configure this with another system, or with a SATA->IDE adapter?

anaconda · Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 22 Location: Finland

I may be wrong person to reply,

BUT I think it can be adjusted from the BIOS. (at least for IDE disks)

ie. suspend if not used in 5 min

fos · Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 30 Location: Texas

I may be way off base but starting and stopping a brushless motor may cause more wear and tear than running constantly. Check with the drive manufacturer and their forums on the specific drive. Many drives that are designed for laptops go into an energy saving mode automatically.

I use a Via M10000n based system with a Hitachi Travelstar 40Mb hard drive as my primary system. It has been very reliable since its construction last year. I chose the Travelstar due to its reliability (MTBF & G Shock ratings).

Jeff

[IDC]Dragon · Joined: 22 Apr 2006 Posts: 41 Location: Hannover, Germany

@anaconda: My bios has an option, thanks for hinting me there, I've tried, but the setting has no effect. Either it only applies to IDE, or it's overridden by DSL-N.

@fos: I don't think that using the sleep will cause noticeable wear. Seagate doesn't specify the park ramped start/stop lifetime, only (to be avoided) contact start/stops are given. But even these are 50.000. Mainly I want spindown to save energy during the perhaps 95% idle time.

Peter · Joined: 20 Apr 2006 Posts: 51

have you tried fooling with the cheat codes to force acpi?

[IDC]Dragon · Joined: 22 Apr 2006 Posts: 41 Location: Hannover, Germany

@Peter: no, ist there such a thing?
Cant't find it in:
[url]http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Cheat_Codes[/url]
(This refers to DSL, not DSL-N, is there a cheat code list of DSL-N?)
Knoppix 4.0 has "acpi=force", seems to have no effect on my system.

During boot, the kernel says: "ACPI Bios found, activating modules: ac battery button container fan processor thermal video". Something like harddisk is not in the list. However, ACPI seems to be used.

@devs:
Perhaps related, the very last text message during boot is:
apm: overridden by ACPI.
modprobe: FATAL: Error inserting apm (/lib/modules/2.6.11/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/apm.ko): No such device

Is that of any concern?

(plus, SATA for me still has that fundamental problem of not working on cold start, only after a reboot)

Thanks
Jörg

roberts · Joined: 17 Apr 2006 Posts: 320 Location: OC CA USA

ACPI is the newer power management system.
ACPI will override the older APM
acpi=force is sometimes needed on older hardware and sometimes an initital message is displayed showing that acpi force is needed.

If you see acpi is activated then no other action is needed for power management.

DSL-N is based on Knoppix 3.9. I do not see any issue regarding SATA and spindown. But perhaps you would have a much larger base of user's experiences by positing this question in the knoppix.net forum.

I have heard of additional laptops tools that might be of interest.

But all else points to your hardware/BIOS setup and or hdparms

[IDC]Dragon · Joined: 22 Apr 2006 Posts: 41 Location: Hannover, Germany

I found a "solution" (workaround: use Kanotix), see my other posting:
[url]http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/dsl-n/f/viewtopic.php?t=116[/url]
(sorry for the duplicate)

Edit: false positive alert, this is no solution, the Kanotix setting doesn't survive a cold start. Grr!

Jörg