hdparm.conf

[Chanchao]

Hello Jason,

Tuesday, July 26, 2005, 9:36:01 PM, you wrote:

JV> It has nothing to do with laziness and everything to do with separation of
JV> concerns.  A properly designed program has no idea whether its
JV> configuration file was hand written with vi or generated by some fancy GUI
JV> "wizard", it just knows that it needs a configuration file with a certain
JV> format.  So, given that a config file is necessary, one way to modify a
JV> program's configuration is to hand edit the config file with an editor.
JV> Another way might be a GUI program provided by a distribution or desktop
JV> environment.

JV> But by no means should hdparm be providing its own GUI wizard.  Indeed,
JV> hdparm is also used in a server environment where a graphical environment
JV> might not even be installed.

Right. I'm sorry I wasn't more clear in my initial e-mail, I wasn't
advocating doing away with config files, or even talking about hdparm
specifically anymore.  (Keep in mind I was trying to explain the
concept of config files, and commenting-out lines in particular)

What I tried (and failed) to say was that I would prefer if user
front-end applications more often included a user-friendly way to
update the config-file, thus guaranteeing syntax-correctness of the
config-file and making the overal experience more user-friendly and
transparent to the user. For tools/daemons that don't have a GUI at
all I would indeed not call the absense of a graphical tool 'lazy'.

As for hdparm, it would be best if users didn't have to fiddle with it
at all. By all means leave the option for people to tweak to their
hearts delight for those who want/need to do so, but some of the more
basic settings should be controlled (or at least managed) by the
(applications included in the) OS. Such as whether to use DMA or
not.

Question: Does Ubuntu's current inability to configure dma in hdparm
(either automatically or in a configuration panel somewhere) make it
slower than it could be? (Not a smug or rhetorical statment this, I'm
actually asking.)  If the answer is 'no' then I vow to never fiddle in
hdparm again. :-)

Cheers,
Chanchao