[ubuntu-studio-devel] PS: Green hard disk drives

[Ralf Mardorf]

You didn't read correctly ;).

My drive goes to sleep after 30 minutes and I want it that way.

Some unknown software does wake up the drive.

I don't want that software does wake up my drive.

This is not a drive issue, it's an Ubuntu software issue.

I'm not experiencing this for my Arch Linux install, on the same
computer, with the same green drive.

I'm aware about software that wakes up green drives, e.g. GVFS does,
but it's not installed.

Some coders are willing to fix this bug, e.g. lxpanel wakes up green
drives due to a bug in libfm, but it's fixed for the next release of
libfm.

It's a common misconception that the drives are buggy. It's bad
programmed software.

I wrote a bug report, but the Ubuntu developers want me to run apport:

"apport-collect 1484497"

I removed apport, for the reasons we discussed a while ago. I hope they
are able to communicate like humans, in the way as it's done at other
bug trackers ;).

I already wrote a script to monitor what wakes up the drive, but had
no time to run it:

[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ cat /usr/src/lm-profiler.sh 
#!/bin/dash
# 2015-08-13

if [ "$(id -u)" != "0" ]; then exit 1; fi

echo "Run   killall lm-profiler   to exit the script."

case $1 in
  "") device=/dev/sdc;;
   *) device=$1;;
esac
log_of="/var/log/lm-profiler"$(date "+%m%b%Y_%H%M%S")".log"

date "+%a, %m %b %Y %T %z"                     > $log_of
echo "smartctl -A $device|grep Cou|grep -v R" >> $log_of
smartctl -a $device|grep Cou|grep -v R        >> $log_of

printf "\nlm-profiler: "                      >> $log_of
lm-profiler                                   >> $log_of

date "+%a, %m %b %Y %T %z"                    >> $log_of
echo "smartctl -A $device|grep Cou|grep -v R" >> $log_of
smartctl -a $device|grep Cou|grep -v R        >> $log_of

exit

On Thu, 13 Aug 2015 13:14:50 -0400, lukefromdc at hushmail.com wrote:
>The Green drives are considered to have buggy FIRMWARE, the 4 second
>spindown interval being just too short and causing huge problems is
>desktop use. The "idle3-tools" package contains a utility to allow
>resetting or disabling this time
>
>sudo apt-get install idle3-tools
> 
>will bring this into Ubuntu or Debian. You can then
>disable the firmware timer and use HDparm to set up a more normal
>timeout. I did this with three of these drives, two of them in a RAID0
>with another drive. Some months later, the 3ed drive died, just fell
>off the SATA bus and could not be recognized again. That's probably
>unrelated, probably caused by another firmware bug in fact, but the
>utility does warn about possible issues.
>
>When I ran that utlity, the start-stop cycles stopped climbing to the
>moon, prolonging the lives of the other two drives,. which are still
>in use today. I would never buy another, however. 
>
>On 8/13/2015 at 8:48 AM, "Ralf Mardorf" <ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net>
>wrote:
>>
>>On Thu, 13 Aug 2015 14:24:19 +0200, Kaj Ailomaa wrote:
>>>Without reading very closely, do you know about this? I had this
>>>problem with two of my older WD drives.
>>>https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Advanced_Format#Special_Consi
>>deration_for_WD_Green_HDDs
>>
>>Yes, but the time when the drive goes to sleep for my drive by 
>>default
>>is set to 30 minutes. I want that my drive spins down and goes to 
>>sleep.
>>
>>I'm aware about broken software that wakes up green drives, that's 
>>why
>>I don't use it, if the coders aren't interested in fixing their 
>>bugs.
>>
>>Some software provides even mounting by mouse click without waking 
>>up
>>drives, so there's absolutely no valid reason, that any kind of
>>monitoring needs to wake up drives. Even not for those who don't 
>>want
>>to mount by CLI.
>>
>>A lxpanel/libfm coder fixed the bug after I reported it.
>>
>>Resume:
>>
>>For my minimalist Wily server install there already is some of that
>>broken software installed, but I don't know what it is and I 
>>unlikely
>>installed or enabled it.
>>
>>For my Arch Linux install I don't run into this issue and  don't 
>>use
>>any kind of workaround to manipulate my drive, while the culprit is
>>broken Linux software ;). I simply avoid usage of buggy software 
>>:).
>>
>>[weremouse at moonstudio ~]$ cat 
>>/mnt/archlinux/etc/systemd/system/lcc_fix.service
>>cat: /mnt/archlinux/etc/systemd/system/lcc_fix.service: No such 
>>file or directory
>>
>>Regards,
>>Ralf
>>
>>-- 
>>ubuntu-studio-devel mailing list
>>ubuntu-studio-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
>>Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
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>
>