I am getting wireless Internet access from my college and I am wanting to put Debian on an old AMD K6-2 to serve as my Internet gateway for the rest of my computers. However, I want this box to run on as little power as possible so my question is one from more of a hardware perspective I guess. I will be getting Internet access via a Linksys 802.11b USB device plugged into the K6-2 box. This box will also be the firewall (using, of course, iptables for NAT and packet filtering), then routing out through a PCI NIC. Okay, now say I've used hdparm to specify that my 2 hard drives in the box should spin down after, say 5 minutes:
hdparm -S 60 /dev/hda hdparm -S 60 /dev/hdb My question is, will the USB device, or firewall, or NIC need to access the drives for any reason under normal circumstances (which in this case will be simply routing packets through the system) and cause the drives to spin up every time one of my computers needs to access the Internet? Because if so, I know it could be detrimental to the drives if they are spinning up and down all the time. Also, is there anything else that could keep the drives spinning up related to my minimal Debian install operating under its normal circumstances? God bless, Forrest Humphrey --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.713 / Virus Database: 469 - Release Date: 6/30/2004 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
