[plug] Laptop hard disk access

[Matt Kemner]

On Tue, 28 Nov 2000, Brad Campbell wrote:

> I have a problem in that something is accessing the HD about every 5 seconds
> and spinning it back up as soon as I spin it down.
>
> Ok, booting with init=/bin/sh stops it happening,
> so it MUST be init's fault.

I remember a thread on linux-kernel about the same issue a long time ago,
and the problem turned out to be init running sync() at regular intervals.

If I remember rightly, the author of init (Miquel V. Smoorenburg) wanted
to keep the sync() in there because it was "safer" in case of power
failure.  The laptop community thought otherwise.

I was fairly sure the laptop guys won, and they fixed that, though.  Maybe
they haven't (or Miquel snuck it back in :)

"apt-get source init" and see if you can locate the sync() and kill it :)

 - Matt