the commit interval for the ext3 filesystem should be higher than 5 seconds for laptop users by default (at least while on battery)

[ubuntu_demon]

The commit interval for the ext3 filesystem should be higher than 5 seconds for laptop users (at least while on battery) to prevent unnecessary disk-activity when the head is parked or the drive is spun down. ext3 partitions should be mounted with commit=X where X is a number in seconds.
/proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs and /proc/sys/vm/dirty_expire_centiseconds should be changed appropriately.

More information :
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0208.1/0464.html
http://linux.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.os.linux.portable/2005-11/0026.html

This might be one of the contributors to the famous Load_Cycle_Count bugs :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/17216
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695

A relevant comment by Bart Samwell :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/17216/comments/83

This should probably be done through laptop-mode taking Bart Samwell's comment in consideration. So laptop-mode should probably be enabled by default (with sane defaults) while on battery in the future. It can't be enabled by default right now because it is causing system hangs for some laptops see : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695/comments/224

[ubuntu_demon (ubuntu-demon)]

A relevant comment by Bart Samwell :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/17216/comments/83

[ubuntu_demon (ubuntu-demon)]

This should probably be done through laptop-mode taking Bart Samwell's comment in consideration.

[ubuntu_demon (ubuntu-demon)]

from http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3736524&postcount=406 :
[quote=kevykev]
I think it might be better to set /proc/sys/vm/dirty_expire_centiseconds instead. This way pdflush will still write out dirty pages if memory is low when it wakes, so you dont run out of ram. Also, I read that it is not a good idea to change dirty_writeback_centisecs at all here:
http://www.westnet.com/~gsmith/content/linux-pdflush.htm
[/quote]

[ubuntu_demon (ubuntu-demon)]

Maybe Ubuntu should consider using a slightly higher commit interval while on battery on default (1 minute?) while laptop-mode can't be enabled for everyone.

laptop-mode can't be enabled by default because using laptop-mode causes system hangs for some people
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/laptop-mode-tools/+bug/172293

[Lea Wiemann (lewiemann)]

FWIW, http://www.westnet.com/~gsmith/content/linux-pdflush.htm mainly talks about *lowering* dirty_writeback_centisecs when it says it's a bad idea to alter it (at least the kernel rule he cites as an example only seems to be problematic if dirty_writeback_centisecs is low). Perhaps someone should check with the author what he thinks about increasing the value.

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Hi guys, has this been implemented yet? I know the default is now ext4 for Karmic.

[xteejx (xteejx)]

It appears that this is still the case, marked confirmed wishlist.