At 4:32am -0400 Wed, 02 Nov 2011, Christopher Svanefalk wrote:
it seems one of the biggest culprits in laptop power consumption is HDD spinup/spindown issues.
does anyone know if there is a way to make the kernel buffer I/0 operations and make them run as batch operations on a set schedule? In other words, can I force the system to use working memory as much as possible, and only physically access the HDD when I explicitly allow it to?
Oh man would I love to have something like this, but alas, my kernel hacking skills ... well, they're lacking. I had approximated something like this about 2 years ago, by setting my various file system commit parameters to 5 or 10 minutes in /etc/fstab, and by running another daemon, the name of which I've now forgotten. It did not work very well, because the HDD would spin down after a minute or so of inactivity, but would fire up again about 30 seconds later, likely due to some program or kernel process requesting an fsync(). Even in areas of no activity, like sitting there while I worked with pen and paper on some non-computer related problem.
I never got farther than that or I'd've written about it. I would really appreciate the results anyone else may be able create. So, to (not) answer your question of "Can it be done?", I don't know. I hope so.
Cheers, Kevin _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lesswatts.org http://lists.lesswatts.org/listinfo/discuss
