Re: Quiet/LowPower Mode for Desktop Linux Distro

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Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 21:03:46 GMT

Kcops <root@nowhere.com> wrote:
> Hi Group,
>
> I have tried Knoppix, Debian, Gnoppix, Suse, Mandrake, RedHat and
> maybe a couple of other Linux distributions.
>
> Most if not all the machines I own (except for an old 486) have the
> facility in the BIOS to spindown the HDD after a certain time period.
> They are only revived when disk access is required and of course they
> will spindown again after the required time period has passed.
>
> Under WinDos spindown was possible especially after this feature was
> builtin into the OS. For all the shortcomings of FAT32 (and I think
> NTFS), and there are many, there is no journalling ie EXT3, Reiser,
> etc system to keep the drives spinning forever. While I understand the
> value and reason for EXT3, Reiser, etc there are desktop situations
> where spinning down the HDD is most welcome if not required. Some of
> you might argue that keeping the HDD running forever is easier on the
> hardware but that holds true if and only if the drives are being spun
> up and down constantly. In my case they might stay off for many hours
> at a time which is more energy efficient and wears disk bearings out a
> LOT slower (Isn't the "cool" of Linux that I will not have to reboot
> for months or years??!! My poor drives not to mention my ears won't
> last if I don't shut the system down to save the drives!!). I have
> "ancient" 1 gig drives that have many thousands of hours on them
> because they have spent a lot of time in the spundown mode (NO, this
> is an example, I DO NOT intend to install a distribution of Linux on 1
> gig drives!!! ).
>
> I would really like to install a version of Linux to a HDD. The moment
> I try that with Debian, RedHat, etc the sound of two HDD spinning
> forever is most annoying. I want quiet computing. Knoppix and Gnoppix
> (to a lesser extent) work great because of the loopback filesystem as
> long as you boot from a CD/Ram (yes you can also boot from HD with a
> Knoppix "image" on it). The only thing that seems to work quietly in
> Knoppix is to have nothing but FAT32 partitions for everything
> including the swapfile. Trying to install any "freshmeat" that require
> compiles in Knoppix results in failure for the most part. This limits
> installation of new software to Mozilla because everything is included
> and can be installed in a user directory anywhere. Before anybody
> grills me about what directories and where I should mention that I
> find the Knoppix system confusing because there seems to be multiple
> etc, sbin directories all over the place. Pull out Midnight Commander
> and you will know what I mean!
>
> A month ago and by accident I read about the (in) famous
> "laptop_mode". However this seems to only work with version 2.6.XXX of
> the kernel. A distribution like Knoppix will not allow major changes
> to the kernel without some gymnastics that are still far away from my
> level of comfort not to mention time ,effort, and experience. It seems
> to be "clear" that installing some distribution of Linux to HDD is a
> better proposition, but what distribution will work that keeps my HDD
> spundown "out of the box"?
>
> Surely some smart person out there has been down this road and found
> the answer that can be digested by a person such as myself?
>
> Thanks

laptopmode is in at least the 2.4.27 kernel, however, it takes more
than just "echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode". There's a fairly large
script called laptop_mode.sh which changes various other settings,
including the HD spindown (via hdparm) and journal commit time for
reiserfs & ext3. You might also take a look at an older solution
called noflushd which might be a better fit for what you want to do
since it can monitor interrupts to determine its mode.

        Jerry

• Previous message: J.O. Aho: "Re: Video editing in Linux?"
• In reply to: Kcops: "Quiet/LowPower Mode for Desktop Linux Distro"
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