On Wed Oct 27 10, Garrett Cooper wrote: > On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 5:41 AM, Alexander Best <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Thu Oct 21 10, Alexander Best wrote: > >> On Thu Oct 21 10, Bruce Cran wrote: > >> > On Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:33:49 +0200 > >> > Dag-Erling Smørgrav <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > > >> > > The problem with setting a short idle timeout is that, on a typical > >> > > laptop or desktop system, you end up spinning the disk down and back > >> > > up several hundred times a day, which increases power consumption, I/O > >> > > latency and wear. > >> > > >> > Do we think our users are silly enough to set a short timeout of just a > >> > few minutes? I'd think most would use a setting of 20-30 minutes at > >> > a minimum. I never did understand why there were so many warnings; > >> > after all, some laptops even come with a default APM scheme in their > >> > HDDs that powers the disk down after 7 seconds! > >> > >> personally i still think something like the attached patch would be nice to > >> have. there's a chance users might type the following: > >> > >> 'atacontrol spindown device 10' > >> > >> thinking the timeout value is measured in minutes. although this gets > >> mentioned > >> in atacontrol(4) it might still be worth reminding the user that he/she is > >> performing actions which could damage the hardware. > > > > i just stumbled upon PR 144770, where a somebody seems to have mistaken the > > spindown value for minutes instead of seconds. so i really think we should > > have > > this warning in atacontrol! > > > > +1 from brucec, if i understood him correctly. > > > > another possibility would be of course changing the spindown value from > > seconds > > to minutes. imo this seems very reasonable, because measuring spindown time > > in > > seconds is too fine grained and not intuitive. just like specifying the > > 'shutdown -p XX' delay in microseconds would not be useful. ;) > > > > cheers. > > alex > > > >> > >> cheers. > >> alex > >> > >> > > >> > -- > >> > Bruce Cran > >> > >> -- > >> a13x > > > >> diff --git a/sbin/atacontrol/atacontrol.c b/sbin/atacontrol/atacontrol.c > >> index 4354ddf..75a131a 100644 > >> --- a/sbin/atacontrol/atacontrol.c > >> +++ b/sbin/atacontrol/atacontrol.c > >> @@ -317,6 +317,10 @@ ata_spindown(int fd, const char *dev, const char *arg) > >> > >> if (arg != NULL) { > >> tmo = strtoul(arg, NULL, 0); > >> + if (tmo < 600) > >> + warnx("setting spindown timeout below 10 minutes is \ > >> + not recommended (see EXAMPLES section of \ > >> + atacontrol(8))\n"); > >> if (ioctl(fd, IOCATASSPINDOWN, &tmo) < 0) > >> err(1, "ioctl(IOCATASSPINDOWN)"); > >> } else { > > Why not just be consistent with other interfaces and provide > suffixes for the values to parse out integral times (i.e. 1 [second], > 1m, 2h)? As long as the value is behavior is properly documented in > the manpage (and potentially as examples in the usage message), that > should be enough.
that would increase usability, since users don't have to specify large values in seconds, if they e.g. want the spindown to happen after 24 hours (24*60*60). but this will not solve the real issue: specifying 'atacontrol spindown 1s' WILL damage your hardware! imo users should be reminded about this even if this is already mentioned in the manual. also: will current scripts which set 'atacontrol spindown 600' e.g. continue to work after implementing the use of suffixes? > Thanks, > -Garrett -- a13x _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[email protected]"
