Starting/Stopping SCSI HD's
Hi
I have a Debian "Slink" 486DX4-100, with 1Gb IDE and 2GB SCSI II hard
disks (hda and sda) partitioned and mounted on /, /usr, /home, /var, and
/usr/local.
I also have a 420Mb SCSI II hard disk (sdb) which has no fixed mount
point, but which I am using to store stuff I don't access frequently, eg,
moving downloaded *.deb files from /var/cache/apt/archives.
I leave my box running Debian all the time, day+night, and the 1Gb IDE and
2Gb SCSI disks are fairly modern, and very quiet, but this 420Mb disk
consumes a fair amount of power, and sounds like a large aircraft taking
off. I have configured this drive to respond to the "start/stop
unit" SCSI command, and configured the Host Adapter (PCI AHA 2940 fast
SCSI II) to send the "start unit" command to this drive during system
boot.
What I need to know now, is (how) can I send the start/stop unit command
when Linux is running, so I can keep the thing spun down when is not
mounted (which is most of the time), and only send the command to spin it
up again when I need to mount it. I know that you can do this in FreeBSD,
(which I run on another PC), the command is
"camcontrol stop [channel:device-id:LUN]" or
"camcontrol start [channel:device-id:LUN]". I presume there is also a way
I can do this in Linux? What packages (if any) will I need to add using
Dselect?
Hope someone can help (and I can take out these earplugs :-)
Simon Hales
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