[Bug 952556] Re: [Precise] [Hardware-killer] HD restarts every few seconds

Fri Apr 27 12:16:05 UTC 2012

A related issue here, I have a Samsung HS122JC in my Dell D430, and
after updating to XUbuntu 12.04, I noticed that the HD started surging
on battery power. Basically it spins up a bit faster for a while and the
drive LED on the laptop glows solid for a moment while everything hangs,
then it frees itself and resumes operation.

I messed around a bit, then noticed in the PM logs that you're setting
the APM_Level to 127 on battery, but my HD only knows of 1, 128 and 254.
Depending on what you set using hdparm -B, the drive rounds it down to
the lower number. Setting it to 127 rounds the APM_Level to 1 and the
drive starts doing these interesting things. Looking in the hdparm
package's change log (and my pm-powersave.log), it seems you guys used
128 up until 11.10, and that's why it happened to work with my drive.

I set apm_battery = 128 in /etc/hdparm.conf and am happy again. I wonder
what APM_Level = 1 really means to this drive.. Doesn't seem like a
power saving mode in any case, more like a super high performance mode
that somehow doesn't quite work (due to the hangs).

The drive itself reports what the level ended up being, so perhaps you
guys might want to "fix" this by testing it in the package's install
script. If the drive won't go to 127, then see if 128 still works and
preconfigure /etc/hdparm.conf?

Here's some log snippets.

AC -> Battery
-- 
Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/95hdparm-apm true:

/dev/sda:
 setting Advanced Power Management level to 0x7f (127)
 APM_level      = 1

/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/95hdparm-apm true: success.
-- 
Battery -> AC
-- 
Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/95hdparm-apm false:

/dev/sda:
 setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
 APM_level      = 254

/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/95hdparm-apm false: success.
--

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/952556

Title:
  [Precise] [Hardware-killer] HD restarts every few seconds

Status in “hdparm” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Hi,

  After update from Oneiric to Precise Beta 1, kernel 3.2.0-18-generic,
  I notice that, when on battery, my Dell XPS  M1330 laptop has its HD
  spin down, then restart, very, very, very often, which means several
  times per minute.

  At this pace the HD won't live long, and this reminds to me a problem
  we had few years ago with "disk killers" linuxes that were
  unloading/reloading the HD heads much too often, killing disks in a
  couple of months.

  So I prefer to ring the alarm bell early...

  Upgrading from Oneiric to Precise I didn't change any power management
  parameter, but it definitely didn't do this before (and still doesn't
  do this on other distros I have on multiboot, so that's no hardware
  issue, only Precise does that on my machine...)

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
  Package: linux-image-3.2.0-18-generic 3.2.0-18.28
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-18.28-generic 3.2.9
  Uname: Linux 3.2.0-18-generic i686
  AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.24.
  ApportVersion: 1.94.1-0ubuntu2
  Architecture: i386
  AudioDevicesInUse:
   USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
   /dev/snd/controlC0:  michel     3044 F.... pulseaudio
  CRDA:
   country FR:
   	(2402 - 2482 @ 40), (N/A, 20)
   	(5170 - 5250 @ 40), (N/A, 20)
   	(5250 - 5330 @ 40), (N/A, 20), DFS
   	(5490 - 5710 @ 40), (N/A, 27), DFS
  Card0.Amixer.info:
   Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xf6dfc000 irq 46'
     Mixer name	: 'Silicon Image SiI1392 HDMI'
     Components	: 'HDA:83847616,1028020a,00100201 HDA:10951392,1028020a,00100000'
     Controls      : 33
     Simple ctrls  : 19
  CheckboxSubmission: 1ea6109db29b53f721a523a77b7f3abf
  CheckboxSystem: d00f84de8a555815fa1c4660280da308
  Date: Sun Mar 11 22:25:00 2012
  EcryptfsInUse: Yes
  HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=0e7ded16-c4fc-4f81-8562-3cb1196809d3
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
  MachineType: Dell Inc. XPS M1330
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=fr_FR:fr:en_US:en
   TERM=xterm
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  ProcFB: 0 inteldrmfb
  ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.2.0-18-generic root=/dev/mapper/VG1-UBUNTU ro clocksource=hpet quiet splash vt.handoff=7
  RelatedPackageVersions:
   linux-restricted-modules-3.2.0-18-generic N/A
   linux-backports-modules-3.2.0-18-generic  N/A
   linux-firmware                            1.71
  SourcePackage: linux
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-03-10 (1 days ago)
  dmi.bios.date: 12/26/2008
  dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
  dmi.bios.version: A15
  dmi.board.name: 0N6705
  dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
  dmi.chassis.type: 8
  dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
  dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA15:bd12/26/2008:svnDellInc.:pnXPSM1330:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0N6705:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvr:
  dmi.product.name: XPS M1330
  dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

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