[Bug 1502307] Re: improper APM settings chosen when power status cannot be determined

[Antoine Pitrou]

I'm entirely sure about the diagnosis, since it seems the configuration
is conditioned on APMD_DRIVES (does it get a default value when the
script is being run?). What I know is that, since Ubuntu 15.04, my HDD
has been showing this behaviour of spinning down quite quickly while it
didn't before...

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Title:
  improper APM settings chosen when power status cannot be determined

Status in hdparm package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  On my *desktop* machine, on_ac_power returns 255 as a status code,
  which according to the man page means "Power status could not be
  determined". This is reasonable, but unfortunately
  /etc/apm/event.d/20hdparm takes it (*) as meaning "use the
  conservative setting" which sets the hard drive to spin down after 90
  seconds of inactivity. This is entirely inappropriate for a desktop
  machine, as now I have to wait several seconds each time I access my
  non-system hard drive.

  /etc/apm/event.d/20hdparm should really take 255 to mean "this is
  unlikely to be a battery-powered machine at all, don't mess with the
  power management settings".

  (*) relevant snippet:

  choose_power ()
  {
      if on_ac_power > /dev/null
      then
  	power_performance
      else
  	power_conserve
      fi
  }

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