Phil Mendelsohn wrote: > > 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 > > A good way to find recently modified files is to use the -newer or -[acm]min options of the find command.