On 17 Dec, this message from Mark Williams echoed through cyberspace: > On Tue, 17 Dec 2002 16:47:35 -0800 > Michael Hope <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> 1. Most accesses are due to updating the file access time. Turning >> this off gets rid of alot of redundant writes. To turn it off, add the >> 'noatime' flag to your fstab and either reboot or re-mount the >> partition. >> 2. On Ext2 and probably XFS you can use the noflushd daemon. This >> changes the kernel operation so that dirty data isn't flushed to the >> hard disk unless the disk is running. This could lead to lost data and >> doesn't work with Ext3 or Reiser.
Any journaling filesystem currently doesn't work with noflushd. I had mine access the disk every five seconds with ext3. > Thanks for your response! I added noatime to the relevant fstab line: > /dev/hda11 / ext2 errors=remount-ro,noatime 0 > 1 You're obviously running ext2; any other partitons? > but the drive still clicks to life every now and then. This is no good! Will > noflushd have any more luck than hdparm? Look for proceses accessing the disk all the time. Besides the usual suspects like syslog (adding a '-' in front of the file name doesn't sync the disk on every write), I did the following: - tune bdflush: add to /proc/sysctl.conf: # Tune bdflush: vm/bdflush = 95 5000 100 512 500 60000 30000 20 0 I don't remember what the values mean; just look them up in the man page. - use devfs: thus accesses to device files don't go to the filesystem (think atime here...) - since I have enough RAM, use tmpfs as /tmp: # /etc/fstab: static file system information. [..] tmpfs /tmp tmpfs size=50M,mode=1777 0 0 - put the pmud socket somewhere else than the default /etc/power/apm. This was being read all the time by asapm displaying bat status: /etc/default/power: PMUD_FLAGS=-a/tmp/apm Obviously, you need to adapt any app that's reading this. Hope this helps Michel ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michel Lanners | " Read Philosophy. Study Art. 23, Rue Paul Henkes | Ask Questions. Make Mistakes. L-1710 Luxembourg | email [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cpu.lu/~mlan | Learn Always. "
