On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 10:43:39AM -0600, Marc A. Ohmann wrote: > Has anybody had any luck getting decent battery life from linux > laptops? I can never get the hd to spin down for any length of time > because of all the random fs activity especially on /var. Without > disabling syslogd, are there any solutions to getting the hd to spin > down? > > hdparm -S 1 /dev/hda > > doesn't work and is rather annoying because the disk spins down and > starts right back up -- probably using as much or more power than if > it had just stayed up. You might try noflushd -- it replaces bdflush, with reasonable ideas of how a laptop should use things. You can also change the settings for update in your /etc/init's. Even when you get these things taken care of, you may find that it spins up more often than you want. I just got this from a guy in Australia, and it's a good procedure to be a bloodhound and find those processes that are spinning you up: "After each disk spin up run the following in /var/log ls -lt * ls -lt */* ls -lt */*/* and so on looking for files that have just been updated." He said he thought he also had to make some adjustment to exim (Debian) -- but you might see if your MTA has something to mess with. Apache, too. Keep in touch about it, though. I feel I'm on the right track with it, but haven't completely nailed it. Maybe if we finish it, we could either add it to the Battery-Powered HOWTO (have you looked at that? Sounds like you know what it covers) or maybe write up a Truly-Fixed Disk HOWTO (w/o using a nailgun. Best, Phil -- "Trying to do something with your life is like sitting down to eat a moose." --Douglas Wood