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Re: pbbuttonsd and laptop-mode start sequence



On Fri, Oct 29, 2004 at 04:29:52AM -0500, Tommy Trussell wrote:
> I'm running Debian kernel 2.6.8-powerpc, on a 1998 PowerBook G3 Series
> "Wallstreet / PDQ."
> 
> I've been trying to figure out why the hard drive would spin
> constantly, regardless of what I do with the laptop-mode.conf
> settings. Based on advice I read somewhere I installed metalog,
> removed sysklogd and klogd, put the noatime parameter in /etc/fstab,
> and tweaked my pbbuttonsd & laptop-mode settings.

Metalog by default doesn't instantly flush files out onto disk, the same
effect can be achieved with syslog by by prepending a minus before the
filename in /etc/syslog.conf. For debugging laptop-mode you can set
/proc/sys/vm/block_dump to 1, which will ask the kernel to log which
applications flushes out data so you can see in the log which application
is spinning up the disk.

> Even after all that, the drive never spun down AT ALL. At some point I
> manually restarted /etc/init.d/laptop-mode, and after a delay, the
> drive spun down. SO on a whim I changed the order they start up in
> /etc/rc2.d by renaming S20laptop-mode to S21laptop-mode. This makes
> S20pbbuttonsd start first and THEN S21laptop-mode.

AFAIK pbbuttonsd still uses it's own version of laptop-mode (see
/etc/power/pmcs-config), pbuttonsd uses scripts and configs files from
/etc/power, it's actually another little init-script like system, with ac
connected/battery mode instead of runlevels. Check out the README in that
dir to learn how pbbuttonsd does stuff.

> Now my drive spins down! Great! Except I don't understand why... it
> seems like the loading order should be the other way around.
> 
> I've also noticed that it doesn't seem to matter what spindown values
> I put into laptop-mode.conf -- I have to manually set hdparm -S to
> adjust the default spindown time.
> I have it working better now, but I'd like to be sure I have it right.
> Could another script or daemon override laptop-mode settings, or do I
> have something broken?

I think pbbuttonsd overrides those setting, try setting the variable
*HDTimeOff in /etc/power/pmcs-config/ for the hdparm -S value.

> Furthermore, I have apm_emu in /etc/modules and lsmod says something
> is using it, though I was under the impression that pbbuttonsd does
> not need it. What is using it?

Pbuttonsd doesn't need apm emulation, maybe some (gnome) dock panel uses
it, try fuser/lsof on the file to see which process uses it.

> [I started to attach the contents of my /etc/rc2.d/ directory, output
> from lsmod, and the contents of /etc/modules,
> /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf, and /etc/pbbuttonsd.conf -- but I
> decided I would hold off on the listings until someone asked for
> something more specific!]

Johannes
-- 
 3. The most fun you can have with your clothes on.

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