Comment 253 for bug 59695

Brian Visel wrote:
>> It is not the place for the operating system to save the user from
>> themselves.
>
> Whose opinion is that? I would argue that it is, indeed the operating
> system's place to save the user from themselves.

...and especially w.r.t. hardware, I might add! The OS is supposed to be
an isolation layer between software and hardware, and while the user
maybe allowed to screw up his software install, the OS should keep the
hardware whole at all times...

> it should be looked into. The basic statement is that hard disks will
> overheat if they don't sleep, yes? This can be checked with smartctl's
> value/worst/thresh settings, perhaps it would be a good idea for people
> who *are* running with systems that have APM disabled to post their
> value/worst/thresh for temperature? While I prefer to do some research
> before moving into the unknown, I'll take a probably-safe unknown over a
> definitely-unsafe known.

I get:

Device Model: Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00
[...]
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 144 144 000 Old_age Always
       - 38 (Lifetime Min/Max 15/45)

On my Dell Inspiron 9400 with hdparm -B 254. No trouble here.

> Congratulations for fixing all of your idle-writers manually. It still
> stands that they system by default installs many idle-writers -- and
> either those should be fixed by default, or the system should account
> for its own default behavior in a way that prevents damage to the
> hardware.

Not only that, but I'd say that even if the distro has fixed its
default-install idle-writers or even all of its idle-writers, it's still
not safe from idle-writers if it hasn't done anything about the
underlying problem. People can, and will, install their own software,
and they *will* be idle-writers!

> I think a more ideal situation would be a smartctl daemon that checks
> for problematic usages, and adjusts settings accordingly, with either
> longevity or power saving in mind, depending on whether the system is on
> AC or on battery, as well as providing a user warning on drive-fail
> situations.

Note that I've just received a report from a laptop-mode-tools user who
noticed that the smartd check at 30-minute intervals would spin up his
disk. So the checks can't be _that_ dynamic, or it may again spin up
disks and unpark heads. :-/

Cheers,
Bart