While trying to achive a spindown of the disk on my laptop (with 1.3.1 installed) I noted that the disk was accessed every 5 seconds. This turned out to be due to the 'update' process, which flushes the filesystem buffers periodically. The "solution" to this problem was to increase the interval from 5 seconds to several minutes.
Given that I want to extend the interval to 10 or more minutes, I'd like to whether this is best done with '-f <secs>' (which sets the interval for the "default" method for flushing) or '-S -s <secs>', which uses 'sync' calls to flush the buffers. The first method is preferred according to man page, but in my case the interval is quite a bit larger than the 5 second default. [A point to note for people who want to achive the same effect is that on my machine, a Toshiba SP430CDS, the spindown setting is not retained after an apm "suspend" operation. I hacked apmd to call /etc/rc.boot/hdparm so that those parameters are again set when a resume is received.] -- Olaf Weber -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
