On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 10:43:39AM -0600, Marc A. Ohmann wrote:

> Has anybody had any luck getting decent battery life from linux
> laptops?  I can never get the hd to spin down for any length of time
> because of all the random fs activity especially on /var.  Without
> disabling syslogd, are there any solutions to getting the hd to spin
> down?
>
> hdparm -S 1 /dev/hda
> 
> doesn't work and is rather annoying because the disk spins down and
> starts right back up -- probably using as much or more power than if
> it had just stayed up.

You might try noflushd -- it replaces bdflush, with reasonable ideas
of how a laptop should use things.  You can also change the settings
for update in your /etc/init's.  Even when you get these things taken
care of, you may find that it spins up more often than you want.

I just got this from a guy in Australia, and it's a good procedure to
be a bloodhound and find those processes that are spinning you up:

"After each disk spin up run the following in
/var/log

ls -lt *
ls -lt */*
ls -lt */*/*

and so on looking for files that have just been updated."

He said he thought he also had to make some adjustment to exim
(Debian) -- but you might see if your MTA has something to mess with.
Apache, too.

Keep in touch about it, though.  I feel I'm on the right track with
it, but haven't completely nailed it.  Maybe if we finish it, we could
either add it to the Battery-Powered HOWTO (have you looked at that?
Sounds like you know what it covers) or maybe write up a Truly-Fixed
Disk HOWTO (w/o using a nailgun.

Best, Phil
 

-- 
"Trying to do something with your life is like
sitting down to eat a moose." --Douglas Wood