sg_start --readonly has no effect

[Ralf Zozmann]

Some days ago i updated my old Debian 5 system to new 'Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS' (as a complete/fresh installation).
In my old installation i used the command 'sg_start --stop /dev/sdd' to spin down a external harddisk after backup (it's a SATA disk connected via USB).
In 12.04 the command does not work; the drive is spinning up immediately after a short click indicating a spin down. This problem seems to be related to

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=561876

and

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hdparm/+bug/388506

The common solution is to access the drive in a read only mode to prevent change events triggered by udev. But modifiying my command to: 'sg_start --readonly --stop /dev/sdd' has no effect, the drive keeps in spin up state.

[Ralf Zozmann (ralf-zozmann)]

One more note: Using sdparm instead of sg_start shows the same behaviour (with read only flag).

[Rafael David Tinoco (rafaeldtinoco)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug. In an effort to keep an
up-to-date and valid list of bugs to work on, I have reviewed this report
to verify it still requires effort and occurs on an Ubuntu release in
standard support, and it does not.

It is unfortunate that we were unable to resolve this defect, however
there appears to be no further action possible at this time. I am
therefore moving the bug to 'Incomplete'. If you disagree or have
new information, we would be grateful if you could please add a comment
stating why and then change the status of the bug to 'New'.