Ubuntu Wonderful? [LWN.net]

Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 26, 2008 17:50 UTC (Wed) by Cato (guest, #7643)
In reply to: Ubuntu Wonderful? by mbottrell
Parent article: First look at Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" beta (ZDNet)

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy is still beta, so some bugs are allowed... I didn't read through all of
them, but this one is well known and NOT an Ubuntu or even a Linux bug really -
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/59695 - it's the 'laptop mode causing high number of hard disk
load/unload cycles', which can be due to the BIOS, default drive configuration, etc, as well
as due to laptop mode (disabled by default in Ubuntu).  

See
http://ubuntudemon.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/ubuntu-is-not...
- this is not a simple 'Ubuntu is broken' type problem. Fixing it involves not just disabling
laptop mode but also avoiding too-frequent HD wakeups on laptops, including setting the commit
interval on ext3 to something higher than 5 seconds - there are various articles out there on
how to do this.

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Ubuntu Wonderful?

Posted Mar 26, 2008 19:18 UTC (Wed) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

Having read more of that bug report re excessive HD load/unload cycles - the fix(es) are
complex, as I thought, and probably involve (some) hard drive firmware versions and also some
Linux/Ubuntu code.  There is no consistent story on this - e.g. some people say that Windows
XP has this bug, other say that it doesn't.  

Most likely there are multiple factors causing the unwanted hard drive behaviour.  In any case
there are clear workarounds using hdparm, and suitable scripts for ACPI wakeup etc, and some
people are reporting that Hardy has fixed this problem on systems that had the problem with
Gutsy.