[plug] Powering down hard disks

[Beau Kuiper]

Hi,

If disabling virutal memory doesn't work, you need to disable each of your 
programs, on at a time, until it does spindown. (the access every 5-10 
seconds stops)

Also, I remembered something else. Syslogd may be causing your problems 
because it always syncs the logs on every log entry that is entered. You need 
to disable this (arguably incorrect) operation by prefixing all filenames 
specified in /etc/syslog.conf with a '-'. You can read the syslog.conf 
manpage for more information about it.

Beau Kuiper
kuiperba at cs.curtin.edu.au



On Monday 23 July 2001 19:57, Beau Kuiper wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Disable virtual memory. (make sure the box has enough ram before doing
> this) 2.4 kernels will aggressively use virtual memory and prevent the disk
> from spinning down. 2.2 isn't as bad though, but it will still cause
> unexpected spinups.
>
> Beau Kuiper
> kuiperba at cs.curtin.edu.au
>
> On Monday 23 July 2001 19:50, Andrew Furey wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > I have a gateway machine with a somewhat noisy hard
> > disk, and given that it's in an otherwise quiet
> > environment, I'd like to power the hard disk down to
> > reduce the noise.
> >
> > I've tried using hdparm to set the spindown time to 5
> > minutes or so, but it still accesses the disk every
> > 5-10 seconds. As suggested in the Battery-powered
> > mini-HOWTO, I've also tried setting flush and sync
> > times to 1 hour (would prefer 3-4 hours), but with no
> > apparent effect.
> >
> > Anyone done this before? I'm 95% sure this disk can be
> > powered down since I've done it before (in another
> > box). The machine is basically idle otherwise (as far
> > as reading from the disk goes).
> >
> > TIA
> > Andrew
> >
> > =====
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> >
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