Setting HDD Spindown from GUI has no effect - ataidle works

[FreeNASBob]

I finally got my SATADOM from memorydepot.com (it took over a month), and I set up .system on it so I could spin down the HDD array. I went into FreeNAS GUI and set spindown to 5 and APM to 1. I waited about ten minutes and checked the drives' statuses with camcontrol ... still spinning. I waited some more. Still spinning. Opened the console and used ataidle -S 5 on all the drives. They all spun down and stayed that way over night.

Any idea what would stop the GUI from working where ataidle works? Is a reboot required after setting HDD Spindown?

 

[dlavigne]

Which version of FreeNAS?

 

[FreeNASBob]

9.2.17. I rebooted and the drives did spin down for a minute and then spun right back up. This is with no clients attached to the LAN.

 

[dlavigne]

It may be the "system dataset pool" setting in System that is causing this. Even if syslog and reporting database are unchecked, SMB metadata is still written to the specified pool. I think if you create a second pool on the SATADOM and point that setting to it, it should allow the disks to spin down.

 

[FreeNASBob]

That's how it is set up. The SATADOM is configured as a pool and .system is pointed to that pool.

 

[dlavigne]

In that case, it sounds like a new bug was introduced somewhere along the way after the system dataset came to be. Please create a bug report at bugs.freenas.org that describes how your system dataset is configured and that running ataidle manually is needed to keep the drives spun down. Post the issue number here.

 

[FreeNASBob]

Every couple of minutes I see an autorepl.py script running. I suspect that may be the issue. Incidentally, I also see an su command run every couple of minutes, but I can't see what's calling it.

 

[FreeNASBob]

https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/6299

 

[mjws00]

An interesting hack, might be to try a clean install. Make the first pool you create your satadom so all the initialization scripts only know about that... then add your data pool. I'd bet money that FreeNAS won't even know it exists and will let it spin down. That would be my 5 minute test, might not work... but worth a shot.

 

[FreeNASBob]

I'd considered that, but it might be a pain reimporting an encrypted pool and all that. I suspect the issue isn't .system, but I don't know for sure yet.

 

[mjws00]

Lol. Gotta learn to re import that pool anyway. No point finding out you are screwed later when you don't have a choice.

 

[FreeNASBob]

Lol. Gotta learn to re import that pool anyway. No point finding out you are screwed later when you don't have a choice.

I did verify that the .system directory no longer exists on the mail pool. It was, in fact, moved to the new pool.

 

[mjws00]

Wow. They hit your issue in minutes. Nice. Though I'm not sure how they could have stayed spun down over night. Unless there was no snap scheduled or something in the config changed. Interesting.

 

[FreeNASBob]

Wow. They hit your issue in minutes. Nice. Though I'm not sure how they could have stayed spun down over night. Unless there was no snap scheduled or something in the config changed. Interesting.

I must have either made a mistake in thinking they were still spun down, or just happened to catch it at just the right moment. I know for certain that they stayed spun down for at least 5 minutes because I sat there with camcontrol watching to see if they'd wake right back up.

 

[FreeNASBob]

I must have either made a mistake in thinking they were still spun down, or just happened to catch it at just the right moment. I know for certain that they stayed spun down for at least 5 minutes because I sat there with camcontrol watching to see if they'd wake right back up.

I just checked again. Nope. They stay spun down after using ataidle. They never start spinning again until I do something to touch the pool.

 

[FreeNASBob]

Since ataidle works, and changing spindown values for a disk doesn't cause anything to appear in the console, it appears the problem is that the GUI is not setting whatever needs to be set. Does anybody know where the GUI sets the HDD Spindown values so I can check what is being written?

 

[FreeNASBob]

/conf/base/etc/rc.conf has only the following:

Code:

# For home users.
ataidle_enable="YES"

No other ataidle parameters are there. Now to manually add them and see if the issue is resolved that way.

 

[FreeNASBob]

Turns out the values are being written to the database.

Code:

[root@freenas /data]# sqlite3 freenas-v1.db
SQLite version 3.8.1 2013-10-17 12:57:35
Enter ".help" for instructions
Enter SQL statements terminated with a ";"
sqlite> select disk_name,disk_hddstandby from storage_disk;
ada5|30
ada1|30
ada2|30
ada3|30
ada4|30
ada6|30
sqlite>

Still no luck finding the problem. Now I'm trying to figure out how to check whether /conf/base/etc/ix.rc.d/ix-ataidle is doing its job correctly, or whether it's being called at all.

 

[FreeNASBob]

Tried placing some "echo" statements in ix-ataidle, but none of them appear in dmesg.today or messages. Does this mean ix-ataidle is not being processed?

 

[FreeNASBob]

I do see the echo statements when I edit a drive to change the HDD Spindown, so it really looks like ix-ataidle is not called at boot.