ubuntu-server 7.10, what might be preventing my USB drive from sleeping?

[Nils Kassube]

Chris G wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 07:17:47AM -0700, David Vincent wrote:
> > Chris G wrote:
> > > I have a new ubuntu server 7.10 installation used as a NAS system
> > > in my garage.  It has a 500Gb external USB drive connected to it.
> > >
> > > Something is preventing the external USB drive from going into
> > > sleep mode, i.e. something is accessing the USB drive at intervals
> > > such that it thinks it shouldn't power down.  Previously when I
> > > used the network drive via its ethernet interface (not from the
> > > ubuntu server system) it did go into sleep mode.
> >
> > Since it is shared, is anything accessing that share?  Maybe
> > something trying to index it?
>
> Not that I can think of, it's just a backup with a cron job backing up
> to it in the small hours.

If it is just a cron job you could mount the disk before doing the backup 
and umount it afterwards. Then there should be nothing accessing the 
drive while there is no backup running.


Nils