Power Manager Default Settings for Battery, don't permit the hard drive to spin down

[Anmar Oueja]

Binary package hint: gnome-power-manager

I discovered that the output of "hdparm -B /dev/sda", gives me a value of 128, which prevents the HD from spinning down.

from hdparm man page (notice the bit about 128 being in the range that
prevents spinning down):

  -B Query/set Advanced Power Management feature, if the drive sup‐
             ports it. A low value means aggressive power management and a
             high value means better performance. Possible settings range
             from values 1 through 127 (which permit spin-down), and values
             128 through 254 (which do not permit spin-down). The highest
             degree of power management is attained with a setting of 1, and
             the highest I/O performance with a setting of 254. A value of
             255 tells hdparm to disable Advanced Power Management altogether
             on the drive (not all drives support disabling it, but most do).

We should change the value to 50 or so to allow for a decent hard drive spinning down value.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: gnome-power-manager 2.32.0-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.33-generic 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Oct 4 10:10:10 2010
GConfNonDefault:
 /apps/gnome-power-manager/lock/blank_screen=false
 /apps/gnome-power-manager/lock/use_screensaver_settings=false
 /apps/gnome-power-manager/notify/sleep_failed_uri=
 /apps/gnome-power-manager/ui/icon_policy=charge
GnomeSessionIdleInhibited: Unknown
GnomeSessionInhibitors: Failed to acquire
GnomeSessionSuspendInhibited: Unknown
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release Candidate amd64 (20101003)
MachineType: LENOVO 32492HU
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic root=UUID=63e300c2-fba4-459d-b700-575a3dd3a887 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-power-manager
dmi.bios.date: 07/14/2010
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: 6QET47WW (1.17 )
dmi.board.name: 32492HU
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: Not Available
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: Not Available
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvr6QET47WW(1.17):bd07/14/2010:svnLENOVO:pn32492HU:pvrThinkPadX201:rvnLENOVO:rn32492HU:rvrNotAvailable:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
dmi.product.name: 32492HU
dmi.product.version: ThinkPad X201
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

pm-utils sets that using the defaults provided by hdparm

[Anmar Oueja (anmar)]

I talked to pitti and he said this was done on purpose to avoid some problems with some hard drives/systems. I would like to know how can I enable the HD spin down again... as my HD and system don't have a problem with that.

If disabling the HDs is a problem, we should have the gnome-power-manager "sping down HDs when possible" be unchecked instead of disabling this feature.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.