From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265209AbUAYT0T (ORCPT ); Sun, 25 Jan 2004 14:26:19 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265216AbUAYT0T (ORCPT ); Sun, 25 Jan 2004 14:26:19 -0500 Received: from 153.Red-213-4-13.pooles.rima-tde.net ([213.4.13.153]:61191 "EHLO kerberos.felipe-alfaro.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265209AbUAYT0P (ORCPT ); Sun, 25 Jan 2004 14:26:15 -0500 Subject: Re: Is there a way to keep the 2.6 kjournald from writing to idle disks? (to allow spin-downs) From: Felipe Alfaro Solana To: Lutz Vieweg Cc: Linux Kernel Mailinglist In-Reply-To: <40140B0A.90707@isg.de> References: <40140B0A.90707@isg.de> Content-Type: text/plain Message-Id: <1075058769.1756.8.camel@teapot.felipe-alfaro.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.5 (1.4.5-8) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 20:26:10 +0100 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sun, 2004-01-25 at 19:29, Lutz Vieweg wrote: > Hi everyone, > > I run a server that usually doesn't have to do anything on the local filesystems, > it just needs to answer some requests and perform some computations in RAM. > > So I use the "hdparm -S 123" parameter setting to keep the (IDE) system disk from > spinning unneccessarily. > > Alas, since an upgrade to kernel 2.6 and ext3 filesystem, I cannot find a way to > let the harddisk spin down - I found out that "kjournald" writes a few blocks every > few seconds. > > As I wouldn't like to downgrade to ext2: Is there any way to keep the 2.6 kjournald > from writing to idle disks? > > I cannot see a good reason why kjournald would write when there are no dirty buffers - > but still it does. Have you tried playing with the laptop-mode patch? It's already in the -mm kernel tree from Andrew Morton. I've been playing with it a little (just a few minutes) and seems keep the disks spun down for some time. However, I haven't been able to get it suit my needs, since I use apps like Evolution which are continuously writting to the disk. If you are willing to play with it, I recommend you downloading the latest -mm patch from http://www.kernel.org, untar the sources and then read Documentation/laptop-mode.txt.