hdparm not putting HDD's to sleep

[teeedubb]

Hi all,

Im wanting to put HDD's to sleep using hdparm after 20min of activity (a 4x disk raid5 array and two single disks). I have edited /etc/hdparm.conf, adding the following lines at the end of the file:


#6TB RAID5 POWER DOWN

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_ST32000542AS_5XW0T1R6 {
spindown_time = 240
}

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_ST32000542AS_5XW0TJZ2 {
spindown_time = 240
}

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_ST32000542AS_5XW0W8SR {
spindown_time = 240
}

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_ST32000542AS_5XW0XM34 {
spindown_time = 240
}

#500GB DISK POWER DOWN

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD501LJS0MUJDWQ411622 {
spindown_time = 240
}

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD501LJS0MUJDWQ411623 {
spindown_time = 240
}
If I issue the command (or variants of):


sudo hdparm -y /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD501LJS0MUJDWQ411622The HDD's will sleep with out issue. Ive looked around my log files and cant seem to find anything to do with hdparm, or the HDD's sleeping. Have I make a mistake in the .conf file? Is there some place hdparm logs, or if I can activate some sort of verbose mode? Or does hdparm need to be activated on boot?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

EDIT: I'm using ubuntu 10.04.1 x64 last updated today.

[teeedubb]

Just a note, all of these drives are for storage and are currently not used for anything.


I remembered that I had set the hdd's to spin down when possible in the gnome power settings, Ive now turned that off but Im going to have to wait a while to try it out as Im expanding an array.


Ive also been thinking that I could add the individual hdparm commands to load on boot, possibly by adding them to /etc/gdm/Init/Default. Iirc, anything run in that script is automatically granted root privileges, but Im not sure if its the best way to do it, as I dont think the command will be issued until gdm starts... but that shouldnt be a problem most of the time.


Any suggestions?

[dabl]

ext3 & ext4 filesystems have a default journalling "commit" frequency of every 5 seconds. Every 5 seconds they sync metadata with data. You can change the commit frequency, but it sounds like you want them to stay asleep until you manually wake them. You'll probably have to unmount the drives to get them to stay asleep.

[teeedubb]

I solved the issue by adding the individual commands to /etc/rc.local. Everything works fine now, HDD's sleep as should. Dont know why it wouldn't work with the hdparm.conf... I haven't noticed the HDD's waking when they shouldn't, but I cant watch it all the time, its a shame that hdparm doesn't seem to log anywhere, this could come in handy trying to work out how long to put HDD's sleep after.

Ive read about journaling messing with standy and life of HDD's, but I think that adding the -noatime option to the mount commands helps alleviate this issue. Every time Ive checked the HDD's they've been in standby mode, so maybe mounting the HDD's with palimpsest counters this issue? A log of HDD sleep/wake actions would come in handy here...

Is there anyway to view/create a log file loggin HDD sleep/wake events?

[longestline]

> Is there anyway to view/create a log file loggin HDD sleep/wake events?

you could set up an hourly cron that calls a shellscript with like

hdparm -C /dev/sdb | sed -n 's/.*state is:\s.\(.*\)/\1/p'
(this gives you "active/idle" or "standby")
and add a datetime. hdparm -C of course doesn't wake up the drive.

[teeedubb]

Thanks for the tip!