Camcontrol question related to Seagate disks
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Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2023 13:24:00 UTC
Certain "newer" Seagate drives have an EPC profile that doesn't interact as expected with the camcontrol "standard" way to tell spinning disks to go into an idle state. Specifically those that support this: https://www.seagate.com/files/docs/pdf/en-GB/whitepaper/tp608-powerchoice-tech-provides-gb.pdf The usual has been "camcontrol idle da{x} -t 600" has typically resulted in a 10 minute timeout, after which it goes into low power (sometimes you want "standby" rather than "idle" depending on the recovery time and power mode you're after and the specifics of the drive in question.) On these Seagate drives, however, you get this back after the time expires: root@NewFS:/home/karl # camcontrol epc da0 -c status APM: NOT Supported, NOT Enabled EPC: Supported, Enabled Low Power Standby NOT Supported Set EPC Power Source NOT Supported Current power state: PM0:Active or PM1:Idle(0xff) In other words it did NOT go into low-power mode even though it says it is supported, on said timer AND the "600 second" setting "took": root@NewFS:/home/karl # camcontrol epc da0 -c list ATA Power Conditions Log: Idle power conditions page: Idle A condition: Flags: Supported, Saveable, Changeable, Default Timer Enabled, Saved Timer Enabled, Current Timer Enabled Default timer setting: 0.0 sec Saved timer setting: 0.0 sec Current timer setting: 0.0 sec Nominal time to active: 0.0 sec Minimum timer: 0.0 sec Maximum timer: 1.0 sec Number of transitions to power condition: 0 Hours in power condition: 0 Idle B condition: Flags: Supported, Saveable, Changeable, Default Timer Enabled, Saved Timer Enabled, Current Timer Enabled Default timer setting: 120.0 sec Saved timer setting: 120.0 sec Current timer setting: 120.0 sec Nominal time to active: 0.0 sec Minimum timer: 0.0 sec Maximum timer: 4294967.0 sec Number of transitions to power condition: 0 Hours in power condition: 0 Idle C condition: Flags: Supported, Saveable, Changeable Default timer setting: 600.0 sec Saved timer setting: 600.0 sec Current timer setting: 0.0 sec Nominal time to active: 6.0 sec Minimum timer: 0.0 sec Maximum timer: 4294967.0 sec Number of transitions to power condition: 0 Hours in power condition: 0 Standby power conditions page: Standby Y condition: Flags: None Default timer setting: 0.0 sec Saved timer setting: 0.0 sec Current timer setting: 0.0 sec Nominal time to active: 0.0 sec Minimum timer: 0.0 sec Maximum timer: 0.0 sec Number of transitions to power condition: 0 Hours in power condition: 0 Standby Z condition: Flags: Supported, Saveable, Changeable, Current Timer Enabled Default timer setting: 900.0 sec Saved timer setting: 900.0 sec Current timer setting: 600.0 sec Nominal time to active: 22.0 sec Minimum timer: 0.0 sec Maximum timer: 4294967.0 sec Number of transitions to power condition: 0 Hours in power condition: 0 The reason is that /it appears //these drives, on power-up, do not enable the timers /until and unless you send a SSU "START" with the correct power conditioning bits. Specifically, the power conditioning value of "7h" has to be specified. If its not then the EPC timers are present but, it appears, they are not used. Does anyone know the proper camcontrol command to do this? The "start" command sent when the system spins up does not appear to do so. If I send an "idle" or "standby" to the drive with a timeout it takes effect immediately but any access to it spins it up (as expected) and it does not re-enter the lower-power mode on the timer, implying that the SSU command did not enable the timers, and thus they remain inactive even though they ARE set and camcontrol does report them. This would appear to be fixable with a line in /etc/rc.local aimed at said drives that sends a "start" with the correct bits set but camcontrol's man page is rather ambiguous on exactly how to do that. Thanks in advance! -- Karl Denninger karl@denninger.net /The Market Ticker/ /[S/MIME encrypted email preferred]/