Re: [arch-dev-public] Load_Cycle_Count and storage-fixup

[Damjan Georgievski]

>> Anyone else has some opinion about how to handle this?
>
> I'd like to affirm the opinions of Roman and Xavier and take some action on
> this.
>
> Anyone object to my putting storage-fixup in [extra] at least? If no
> objections by W 9/21, I plan to go ahead with that step. If it works out, we
> can talk about follow-up steps like:
>
> 1) moving it to [core]
> 2) integrating it into default rc.d scripts
>
> It's a pretty serious issue for laptop users with affected drives. And the
> drives are pretty popular ones, methinks.

Also note that, when raising awerness about this issue, the fixup
ussually needs to be run on resume from disk (and I think resume from
ram) too. Not only on boot.


--
damjan

[Ng Oon-Ee]

On Mon, 2009-10-19 at 02:54 +0200, Damjan Georgievski wrote:

> >> Anyone else has some opinion about how to handle this?
> >
> > I'd like to affirm the opinions of Roman and Xavier and take some action on
> > this.
> >
> > Anyone object to my putting storage-fixup in [extra] at least? If no
> > objections by W 9/21, I plan to go ahead with that step. If it works out, we
> > can talk about follow-up steps like:
> >
> > 1) moving it to [core]
> > 2) integrating it into default rc.d scripts
> >
> > It's a pretty serious issue for laptop users with affected drives. And the
> > drives are pretty popular ones, methinks.
>
> Also note that, when raising awerness about this issue, the fixup
> ussually needs to be run on resume from disk (and I think resume from
> ram) too. Not only on boot.
>
>

Isn't all this handled simply by getting laptop-mode to do it? Its
possible to allow laptop-mode to control hdparm settings, after all.
Besides, this is mainly (exclusively?) a problem for laptop hard discs.

[Alexander Lam]

laptop-mode by itself won't do it, but laptop-mode-tools will.

However, some users (such as I) see laptop-mode-tools as bloat because it
comes with all this other stuff for controlling other aspects of power
consumption.

[Roman Kyrylych]

2009/10/19 Ng Oon-Ee <ngoonee@...>:
> On Mon, 2009-10-19 at 02:54 +0200, Damjan Georgievski wrote:
>> >> Anyone else has some opinion about how to handle this?
>> >
>> > I'd like to affirm the opinions of Roman and Xavier and take some action on
>> > this.

Thanks for picking up this topic!

>> > Anyone object to my putting storage-fixup in [extra] at least? If no
>> > objections by W 9/21, I plan to go ahead with that step. If it works out, we
>> > can talk about follow-up steps like:
>> >
>> > 1) moving it to [core]
>> > 2) integrating it into default rc.d scripts
>> >
>> > It's a pretty serious issue for laptop users with affected drives. And the
>> > drives are pretty popular ones, methinks.

No objections, it seems, go for it!

>> Also note that, when raising awerness about this issue, the fixup
>> ussually needs to be run on resume from disk (and I think resume from
>> ram) too. Not only on boot.

Good point!

> Isn't all this handled simply by getting laptop-mode to do it? Its
> possible to allow laptop-mode to control hdparm settings, after all.

IIRC laptop-mode-tools can fix this if configured correctly,
but this is not the right solution IMO.

> Besides, this is mainly (exclusively?) a problem for laptop hard discs.

I'm not sure if this is a (common enough) problem for 3.5" (non-laptop) HDDs,
but it's worth noting that 2.5" (AKA "laptop") HDDs are used not only
in laptops:
Mini-ITX boxes, NAS boxes, HDTV players, even some servers - all have
2.5" HDDs quite often.

--
Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)

[Stefan Erik Wilkens]

Hey guys, new to the list.

Concerning this load_cycle_count issue, we should recall that applying
hdparm -B 255 (254) /dev/sdx has more consequences that the user should, at
least, be made aware of.

As I'm sure you are all aware: completely disabeling the feature will cause
increased heat production and power consumption for one, but most
importantly: It increases the chance that the drive is damaged if the mobile
device is moved during operation! Perhaps this sort of action should be left
to the user, and an applet or deamon should be written that monitors the
spin cycle count through S.M.A.R.T. and informs the user if it is increasing
at an alarming rate in a more graphical or direct way. The user him/herself
can then decide what to do. Is storage-fixup's -d an option for this?

yes, it's a serious issue and yes the users should be aware. But should the
system itself decide to take this action or should we simply inform and let
the user decide. I lean towards the latter myself.

2009/10/19 Damjan Georgievski <gdamjan@...>

> >> Anyone else has some opinion about how to handle this?
> >
> > I'd like to affirm the opinions of Roman and Xavier and take some action
> on
> > this.
> >
> > Anyone object to my putting storage-fixup in [extra] at least? If no
> > objections by W 9/21, I plan to go ahead with that step. If it works out,
> we
> > can talk about follow-up steps like:
> >
> > 1) moving it to [core]
> > 2) integrating it into default rc.d scripts
> >
> > It's a pretty serious issue for laptop users with affected drives. And
> the
> > drives are pretty popular ones, methinks.
>
> Also note that, when raising awerness about this issue, the fixup
> ussually needs to be run on resume from disk (and I think resume from
> ram) too. Not only on boot.
>
>
> --
> damjan
>

--
msn: stefan_wilkens@...
e-mail: stefanwilkens@...
blog: http://www.stefanwilkens.eu/
adres: Lipperkerkstraat 14 7511 DA Enschede

[Daenyth Blank]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 11:39, Stefan Erik Wilkens
<stefanwilkens@...> wrote:
> yes, it's a serious issue and yes the users should be aware. But should the
> system itself decide to take this action or should we simply inform and let
> the user decide. I lean towards the latter myself.
>
Absolutely inform the user. Don't do anything automatically for this.

Also, please bottom post for these lists.

[Aaron Griffin]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Roman Kyrylych
<roman.kyrylych@...> wrote:

> 2009/10/19 Ng Oon-Ee <ngoonee@...>:
>> On Mon, 2009-10-19 at 02:54 +0200, Damjan Georgievski wrote:
>>> >> Anyone else has some opinion about how to handle this?
>>> >
>>> > I'd like to affirm the opinions of Roman and Xavier and take some action on
>>> > this.
>
> Thanks for picking up this topic!
>
>>> > Anyone object to my putting storage-fixup in [extra] at least? If no
>>> > objections by W 9/21, I plan to go ahead with that step. If it works out, we
>>> > can talk about follow-up steps like:
>>> >
>>> > 1) moving it to [core]
>>> > 2) integrating it into default rc.d scripts
>>> >
>>> > It's a pretty serious issue for laptop users with affected drives. And the
>>> > drives are pretty popular ones, methinks.
>
> No objections, it seems, go for it!
>
>>> Also note that, when raising awerness about this issue, the fixup
>>> ussually needs to be run on resume from disk (and I think resume from
>>> ram) too. Not only on boot.
>
> Good point!
>
>> Isn't all this handled simply by getting laptop-mode to do it? Its
>> possible to allow laptop-mode to control hdparm settings, after all.
>
> IIRC laptop-mode-tools can fix this if configured correctly,
> but this is not the right solution IMO.
>
>> Besides, this is mainly (exclusively?) a problem for laptop hard discs.
>
> I'm not sure if this is a (common enough) problem for 3.5" (non-laptop) HDDs,
> but it's worth noting that 2.5" (AKA "laptop") HDDs are used not only
> in laptops:
> Mini-ITX boxes, NAS boxes, HDTV players, even some servers - all have
> 2.5" HDDs quite often.

What ever happened to this issue? I've been trying to follow it, but
got lost with other things. Do we have storage-fixup anywhere? Is
there a wiki page on this info?

[Eric Bélanger-2]

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@...> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Roman Kyrylych
> <roman.kyrylych@...> wrote:
>> 2009/10/19 Ng Oon-Ee <ngoonee@...>:
>>> On Mon, 2009-10-19 at 02:54 +0200, Damjan Georgievski wrote:
>>>> >> Anyone else has some opinion about how to handle this?
>>>> >
>>>> > I'd like to affirm the opinions of Roman and Xavier and take some action on
>>>> > this.
>>
>> Thanks for picking up this topic!
>>
>>>> > Anyone object to my putting storage-fixup in [extra] at least? If no
>>>> > objections by W 9/21, I plan to go ahead with that step. If it works out, we
>>>> > can talk about follow-up steps like:
>>>> >
>>>> > 1) moving it to [core]
>>>> > 2) integrating it into default rc.d scripts
>>>> >
>>>> > It's a pretty serious issue for laptop users with affected drives. And the
>>>> > drives are pretty popular ones, methinks.
>>
>> No objections, it seems, go for it!
>>
>>>> Also note that, when raising awerness about this issue, the fixup
>>>> ussually needs to be run on resume from disk (and I think resume from
>>>> ram) too. Not only on boot.
>>
>> Good point!
>>
>>> Isn't all this handled simply by getting laptop-mode to do it? Its
>>> possible to allow laptop-mode to control hdparm settings, after all.
>>
>> IIRC laptop-mode-tools can fix this if configured correctly,
>> but this is not the right solution IMO.
>>
>>> Besides, this is mainly (exclusively?) a problem for laptop hard discs.
>>
>> I'm not sure if this is a (common enough) problem for 3.5" (non-laptop) HDDs,
>> but it's worth noting that 2.5" (AKA "laptop") HDDs are used not only
>> in laptops:
>> Mini-ITX boxes, NAS boxes, HDTV players, even some servers - all have
>> 2.5" HDDs quite often.
>
> What ever happened to this issue? I've been trying to follow it, but
> got lost with other things. Do we have storage-fixup anywhere? Is
> there a wiki page on this info?
>

Paul has added storage-fixup to extra. I  think that nothing else has been done.

[Michael Towers-4]

When I got a new laptop I investigated this problem a little and found
that with hdparm -B 254/255 the temperature went up quite
significantly. This may be a freak and I would love to know whether
there really is something behind it, but when I used -B 200 the
temperature increase was clearly smaller, but the load cycle count did
not increase!!! Is this actually at all possible? Does the -B option
do something other than only affecting head loading? Does anybody
know?

In looking through the storage-fixup package data I see that always -B
254 or -B 255 is set, so obviously there is no sign of other, possibly
more optimal values there.

[Xavier Chantry-2]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Michael Towers <larch42@...> wrote:

> When I got a new laptop I investigated this problem a little and found
> that with hdparm -B 254/255 the temperature went up quite
> significantly. This may be a freak and I would love to know whether
> there really is something behind it, but when I used -B 200 the
> temperature increase was clearly smaller, but the load cycle count did
> not increase!!! Is this actually at all possible? Does the -B option
> do something other than only affecting head loading? Does anybody
> know?
>
> In looking through the storage-fixup package data I see that always -B
> 254 or -B 255 is set, so obviously there is no sign of other, possibly
> more optimal values there.
>

That sounds like an interesting concern, you might want to ask
upstream (= storage-fixup maintainers) about it :)

[Aaron Griffin]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Xavier <shiningxc@...> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Michael Towers <larch42@...> wrote:
>> When I got a new laptop I investigated this problem a little and found
>> that with hdparm -B 254/255 the temperature went up quite
>> significantly. This may be a freak and I would love to know whether
>> there really is something behind it, but when I used -B 200 the
>> temperature increase was clearly smaller, but the load cycle count did
>> not increase!!! Is this actually at all possible? Does the -B option
>> do something other than only affecting head loading? Does anybody
>> know?
>>
>> In looking through the storage-fixup package data I see that always -B
>> 254 or -B 255 is set, so obviously there is no sign of other, possibly
>> more optimal values there.
>>
>
> That sounds like an interesting concern, you might want to ask
> upstream (= storage-fixup maintainers) about it :)

Anyone happen to know how often the storage-fixup rules are updated?
My Eee drive isn't listed (mine does NOT have an SSD) so I'm not sure
what the hdparm params should be.

[Xavier Chantry-2]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@...> wrote:
>
> Anyone happen to know how often the storage-fixup rules are updated?
> My Eee drive isn't listed (mine does NOT have an SSD) so I'm not sure
> what the hdparm params should be.
>

There might be a clue from the config file itself :
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/tj/storage-fixup.git;a=blob_plain;f=storage-fixup.conf;hb=HEAD

# If you have a harddrive which does crazy unloading but not listed
# here, please write to linux-ide@... with the outputs of
# "dmidecode" and "hdparm -I DRIVE" attached.  On a laptop the DRIVE
# is usually /dev/sda.

[Stefan Erik Wilkens]

2009/10/29 Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@...>:

> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Xavier <shiningxc@...> wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Michael Towers <larch42@...> wrote:
>>> When I got a new laptop I investigated this problem a little and found
>>> that with hdparm -B 254/255 the temperature went up quite
>>> significantly. This may be a freak and I would love to know whether
>>> there really is something behind it, but when I used -B 200 the
>>> temperature increase was clearly smaller, but the load cycle count did
>>> not increase!!! Is this actually at all possible? Does the -B option
>>> do something other than only affecting head loading? Does anybody
>>> know?
>>>
>>> In looking through the storage-fixup package data I see that always -B
>>> 254 or -B 255 is set, so obviously there is no sign of other, possibly
>>> more optimal values there.
>>>
>>
>> That sounds like an interesting concern, you might want to ask
>> upstream (= storage-fixup maintainers) about it :)
>
> Anyone happen to know how often the storage-fixup rules are updated?
> My Eee drive isn't listed (mine does NOT have an SSD) so I'm not sure
> what the hdparm params should be.
>

>From what I have read on the topic: There is no static answer to "what
it should be". The ammount of times / time unit that a drive should
cycle is dependant on temperature and actual drive use. If it's
sitting still (the laptop it motionless) in a cool area with nothing
at all to do, the drive does not have to cycle.

However, if the laptop is in motion (train, car) and the system is
hot, cycling the drive can reduce heat output and prevent damage to
the drive due to sudden movement. This is why simply setting things to
-B 255 or 254 (which disables the feature completely) is not something
that should be done without at least informing the user.

Through experimentation, I suppose you can find a few values to work
with. From the quick glance I took at storage-fixup, it seems to
disable the feature completely. Does anybody know if it's more
advanced than this or is this the full scope of this script?

--
msn: stefan_wilkens@...
e-mail: stefanwilkens@...
blog: http://www.stefanwilkens.eu/
adres: Lipperkerkstraat 14 7511 DA Enschede

[Xavier Chantry-2]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 6:58 PM, Stefan Erik Wilkens
<stefanwilkens@...> wrote:
> Through experimentation, I suppose you can find a few values to work
> with. From the quick glance I took at storage-fixup, it seems to
> disable the feature completely. Does anybody know if it's more
> advanced than this or is this the full scope of this script?
>

did you look at the config file ?
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/tj/storage-fixup.git;a=blob_plain;f=storage-fixup.conf;hb=HEAD

It contains information about known bad disk and the command to
execute for each disk.
The script just parses the config file, looks if your disk matches one
from the config file, and executes the command from the config.

[Michael Towers-4]

Given the difficulty of finding the optimal solution to this problem,
I think I agree with the earlier suggestion to just monitor the
situation and report to the user if there is a problem - and provide a
useful account of how to handle it. I imagine it would not be too
difficult to write cron scripts to monitor the count. Perhaps one
could measure load cycles over the last hour, the last day and the
last month, for example. There could be some sort of notification if
some threshold or other was overstepped. At this point it is of course
less straightforward - what sort of notification should that be? A
'normal' desktop notification would perhaps work for most users?

Normally I wouldn't suggest something like this here for fear of
getting my knuckles rapped - at present I really don't have time to do
it myself - but maybe someone is just itching to get going on a little
project like this.

[Xavier Chantry-2]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 8:34 PM, Michael Towers <larch42@...> wrote:

> Given the difficulty of finding the optimal solution to this problem,
> I think I agree with the earlier suggestion to just monitor the
> situation and report to the user if there is a problem - and provide a
> useful account of how to handle it. I imagine it would not be too
> difficult to write cron scripts to monitor the count. Perhaps one
> could measure load cycles over the last hour, the last day and the
> last month, for example. There could be some sort of notification if
> some threshold or other was overstepped. At this point it is of course
> less straightforward - what sort of notification should that be? A
> 'normal' desktop notification would perhaps work for most users?
>
> Normally I wouldn't suggest something like this here for fear of
> getting my knuckles rapped - at present I really don't have time to do
> it myself - but maybe someone is just itching to get going on a little
> project like this.
>

That does not sound like a bad idea. And it could benefit to all
distro, not only arch.

[Stefan Erik Wilkens]

2009/10/29 Xavier <shiningxc@...>:

> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 6:58 PM, Stefan Erik Wilkens
> <stefanwilkens@...> wrote:
>> Through experimentation, I suppose you can find a few values to work
>> with. From the quick glance I took at storage-fixup, it seems to
>> disable the feature completely. Does anybody know if it's more
>> advanced than this or is this the full scope of this script?
>>
>
> did you look at the config file ?
> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/tj/storage-fixup.git;a=blob_plain;f=storage-fixup.conf;hb=HEAD
>
> It contains information about known bad disk and the command to
> execute for each disk.
> The script just parses the config file, looks if your disk matches one
> from the config file, and executes the command from the config.
>

I did, yes.

it seems to do either -B 254 or 255, which disables the feature
completely. some drives disable at 254, others at 255. That seems to
be the only difference.

What michael towers is suggesting is exactly what should be done IMHO.
You can monitor though smartctl or even use smartd, accumulate data
and adjust the value to hdparm with, based on the rate that the
load_cycle value increases over time.

But, again, this leaves us with a few values we have to define as "ok".

1. how many cycles per time is good? drives are made for a certain
ammount of cycles(600.000 or 300.000 I believe), devide that against a
few years (say 5) to find a value to use as benchmark? Should we make
a difference between mobile and stationary systems?
2. we should check if the system is on battery power, that usually
means it's mobile and moving (if it's on a desk, it would be on ac).
If it is on battery power, we should take into account that more
cycles reduces poweruse and reduces the chance of damage due to
shocks. Or should we ignore that and stay with the value determined at
1 ?

As you can see, there are a few choises that really should be made by
the owner of the system.

To be honest though. Something that checks / updates to maintain a
normal load_cycle average and offers the feature to disable it
completely would be better than the current state of storage-fixup.

I can't help but feel this isn't very KISS though.

--
msn: stefan_wilkens@...
e-mail: stefanwilkens@...
blog: http://www.stefanwilkens.eu/
adres: Lipperkerkstraat 14 7511 DA Enschede

[Roman Kyrylych]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 15:08, Michael Towers <larch42@...> wrote:

> When I got a new laptop I investigated this problem a little and found
> that with hdparm -B 254/255 the temperature went up quite
> significantly. This may be a freak and I would love to know whether
> there really is something behind it, but when I used -B 200 the
> temperature increase was clearly smaller, but the load cycle count did
> not increase!!! Is this actually at all possible? Does the -B option
> do something other than only affecting head loading? Does anybody
> know?
>
> In looking through the storage-fixup package data I see that always -B
> 254 or -B 255 is set, so obviously there is no sign of other, possibly
> more optimal values there.

Unfortunately there are not many ways to turn off head parking
while not turning off power management.

For WD drives there is a special DOS binary for that: wdidle3.exe
which is provided by the support, but not allowed to be redistributed.
You can easily find it on the internet though.

Also I have seen some people doing tricks with sdparm,
but I have not seen a reliable (non-specific to a particular HDD
model) solution yet.

--
Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)