non-stop disk activity

[Robin Laing]

Per Bothner wrote:
> I'm trying to run a server on solar power.  (I can buy a lot
> of solar panels for what PG&E would charge to run power lines.)
> So I'm trying to figure out how to minimize power.  I tried
> using the hdparm -S to spin down the disk drive when idle.
> The problem is it never is!
> 
> First, the cpuspeed daemon writes out a log message
> May 12 10:37:34 kelso kernel: longhaul: FSB:133 Mult:5.5x
> multiple times a minute.  This is due to a dprintk in
> /usr/src/linux-2.6.5-1.327/arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/longhaul.c
> I can disable the cpuspeed service, but that doesn't seem like a
> good idea if I'm concerned about power usage!  Can this message
> be removed?
> 
> Second, a bunch of things get run by cron.  mailman wants cron
> to run gate_news every 5 minutes.  This is still going on even
> after I disables mailman in the services configuration.  I can
> presumably edit /var/mailman/cron/*, but I shouldn't have to
> if I've turned off the mailman service.
> 
> mrtg is also run every 5 minutes, and I have no idea how to
> turn that off.
> 
> /usr/lib/sa/sa1 is run every 10 minutes, and I'd like to turn
> that off or run it less frequently.  (I assume this is
> "system accounting" but I'm not sure).
> 
> These are bad enough, but when I run iostat it tells me that
> something is writing to the disk every 5 or 10 seconds!  If
> I can't fix this there is no way to ever spin down the disk.

How about putting enough memory into the system and load the whole the 
image into ram and only use HD for data storage?

There are ways of doing it but I don't know how.  Look for diskless 
workstations.

-- 
Robin Laing