[plug] Powering down hard disks

[Brad Campbell]

Beau Kuiper wrote:
> 
> 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
> 

I have never got this to work with a 2.2 or 2.4 kernel.. it used to work 
with a 2.0 kernel though..
With the 2.2 kernel, disable VM, mount your drives with noatime, disable
cron, or make sure there is nothing, like exim which runs the queue every
20 minutes, in the crontab.
I run through the /etc/init.d dir and shutdown almost everything.. but something
will still spin the drive up again..
Half the options in the battery-power howto are only applicable to the 2.0 kernel
anyway..

Good luck.;

-- 
Brad....
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