[wplug] Laptop disk access question

Bill Moran wmoran at potentialtech.com
Wed Aug 24 15:01:29 EDT 2005


"Teodorski, Chris" <teodorski at ppg.com> wrote:

> Seems to happen on AC or battery... 
> 
> Does not appear to be load related -- I was running KDE on FreeBSD so I
> would expect it was pretty intense too.

Do the noise/dely seem to be the HDD going in to powersave and then spinning
back up?

Since FreeBSD is primarily developed as a server OS, it's not going to
install/configure any power saving features - you'll have to grab the
extra software and install/configure it yourself.  I'm guessing that what
was said by someone else is likely correct, that Ubuntu has powersaving
stuff turned on by default, and it's a little too aggresive for your
work habits.  (i.e. it keeps trying to save power right when you need
to use it ;)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wplug-bounces+teodorski=ppg.com at wplug.org [mailto:wplug-bounces+teodorski=ppg.com at wplug.org] On Behalf Of Eric Cooper
> Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2005 2:46 PM
> To: wplug at wplug.org
> Subject: Re: [wplug] Laptop disk access question
> 
> On Wed, Aug 24, 2005 at 02:32:18PM -0400, Teodorski, Chris wrote:
> > I have Ubuntu installed on my Dell laptop and the drive sounds like
> > it is spinning VERY frequently.  When I hear the drive spinning,
> > "stuff" I'm doing in X seems to hang -- but only for a split second
> > and then things are normal -- until the next noise from the drive.
> > 
> > However when I installed FreeBSD on the laptop I did not have the
> > same issue -- which suggests that FreeBSD interacted with the drive
> > differently in some way.
> > 
> > Does anyone have any idea what I need to do to stop this from
> > happening in Linux?  I'm wondering if this is DMA related and if so,
> > how do I fix it?
> 
> Ubuntu may have configured laptop-mode by default, which spins down
> your hard drive when not in use (perhaps too aggressively).  The noise
> and delay might be when it has to spin back up.  If the problem goes
> away when your laptop is on AC power, this is probably the reason.
> You might also try the laptop-mode-utils package, which lets you tweak
> the settings.
> 
> -- 
> Eric Cooper             e c c @ c m u . e d u
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> 
> 
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-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com


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