Slackware 12.2 on a laptop?

Hi Slackers,
Recently I have read an article about UBUNTU's laptop killing bug on "slashdot.com (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/17/2127254)". Now my question is about Slackware. I have installed Slack on my laptop by using default kernel. Now everything works well except suspend function. Is the default kernel true choice? Is there any risk (decreasing lifetime) for any hardware on my laptop? Does it required anything (another configurations, required packages, ...)more than a straightly forward installation?

Hi,

You should read the 'CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT';

excerpt from 'CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT';
As stated earlier, it is recommended that you use one of the generic kernels
  rather than the huge kernels; the huge kernels are primarily intended as 
  "installer" and "emergency" kernels in case you forget to make an initrd.
  For most systems, you should use the generic SMP kernel if it will run, 
  even if your system is not SMP-capable.  Some newer hardware needs the 
  local APIC enabled in the SMP kernel, and theoretically there should not be
  a performance penalty with using the SMP-capable kernel on a uniprocessor 
  machine, as the SMP kernel tests for this and makes necessary adjustments.
  Furthermore, the kernel sources shipped with Slackware are configured for
  SMP usage, so you won't have to modify those to build external modules
  (such as NVidia or ATI proprietary drivers) if you use the SMP kernel.

  If you decide to use one of the non-SMP kernels, you will need to follow the
  instructions in /extra/linux-2.6.27.7-nosmp-sdk/README.TXT to modify your
  kernel sources for non-SMP usage.  Note that this only applies if you are
  using the Slackware-provided non-SMP kernel - if you build a custom kernel,
  the symlinks at /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/{build,source} will point to the
  correct kernel source so long as you don't (re)move it.

Is there any risk (decreasing lifetime) for any hardware on my laptop? Does it required anything (another configurations, required packages, ...)more than a straightly forward installation?

If you have hardware that is not recognized then you will need to create a new kernel if the devices are not supported in the kernel you are using. Do a 'lspci -vv' from the 'cli' to get a list of devices. The kernel compilation has been covered a lot here on LQ, so do a search or look at the sticky 'This is how I do it all' by shilo.

These links and others can be found at 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

Don't believe everything you read on slashdot, there's a lot of FUD. In this case, as much as I dislike Ubuntu and would like to pin blame on them, it is NOT Ubuntu's fault, it is the HDD manufacturer's fault. Note here:

This problem has been confirmed in Ubuntu as well as in other distributions and on MacOS X and Windows. Symptoms of this bug are: * Frequent HD clicks -- more than one per 3 minutes while idle, louder than the typical access sounds. Often more than twice per minute. On some disks, the click is very quiet * Rapidly Increasing Load_Cycle_Count as displayed in the final number in "sudo smartctl -a /dev/hda | grep Load_Cycle_Count" (where /dev/hda is replaced with your own hard disk device) The problem is only present due to the existence of *all four* of the following factors: * Hardware is set (default or otherwise) to aggressive power management, causing heads to park. (default behaviour of many drives and often the only user available type of power management) * Disk is touched often, causing heads to unpark. (default behaviour of many distributions) * Drives are spec'd to a limited number of these cycles. (600,000 is the most common, although some may be spec'd higher or lower). * The OS not setting disk APM variables according to current disk access pattern.

This happens mostly with Hitachi Travelstar:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Proble...drive_clicking
I happen to have one of these and it is true, it does click and you can't stop it no matter what OS you are running. It's just badly designed, both firmware and drive.

If true, this bug seems a bit scary to me. The article in the bugreport says the ideal # of load/unload cycles per hour should be <=15 but on my system (HP Pavilion dv6400) the average is ~5000 per hour. One of the articles it refers to says the disks are made to allow for 300.000 cycles but my drive's count is 1.527.000 already (this laptop is around 1,5 years old).

Turning APM off by hdparm -B 255 doesn't seem to stop the cycle count increase. But the article says some drives ignore this command, so you need to disable APM from the BIOS.

This seems to be a problem with Linux in general, not something Ubuntu-specific. In Slackware you can use

hdparm -B 255 /dev/xxx

in /etc/rc.c/rc.local to disable load cycling (on the systems where this method works).

Edit: It's 255, not 254 that turns apm off.

That's a fairly worrying issue. I checked my Load Cycle Count and found it to be 90k with 1100 hours of operation. That's nowhere near the count frequency some people seem to report, but still struck me as quite alot.

I just updated my rc.local to set APM at 254. Will be interesting to check on it again a while from now to see what difference it makes.

Dave

Originally Posted by xflow7 I checked my Load Cycle Count and found it to be 90k with 1100 hours of operation.

Argh, mine is at 1,5 million after 5300 hours. I'd say, given the specs, your cycle count looks OK Dave, but failure of my hard drive is probably imminent. Disabling APM by hdparm doesn't work and the BIOS has no setting to disable it. I use LUKS encryption, so if there's corruption it may be pretty bad. I'll buy an external drive for backup. Thanks for pointing at this issue phys.

Originally Posted by Ilgar Argh, mine is at 1,5 million after 5300 hours. I'd say, given the specs, your cycle count looks OK Dave, but failure of my hard drive is probably imminent. Disabling APM by hdparm doesn't work and the BIOS has no setting to disable it. I use LUKS encryption, so if there's corruption it may be pretty bad. I'll buy an external drive for backup. Thanks for pointing at this issue phys.

HDD is not a method of backing up data. Whether you believe me or not, you will find out the hard way.

Originally Posted by H_TeXMeX_H HDD is not a method of backing up data. Whether you believe me or not, you will find out the hard way.

Can you elaborate on that? Last time i needed backups, I had only used DVDs but they turned out to be corrupt somehow, and I lost many things. This time I intend to go DVD + HDD.

Originally Posted by Ilgar Can you elaborate on that? Last time i needed backups, I had only used DVDs but they turned out to be corrupt somehow, and I lost many things. This time I intend to go DVD + HDD.

DVDs and check to make sure they are not corrupt. For important backups I use dvdisaster to make an ECC that you can keep on your HDD in case the DVD gets damaged you have a greater chance of recovering your data. You can also use it to check data integrity of a DVD.

Yes but what's wrong with external HDDs?

i just wanted to check the load cycle count on my drives. is smartctl the correct way of doing that? i tried it and it said "SMART Disabled. Use option -s with argument 'on' to enable it." is it ok to enable it (just checking, don't want to stuff up the drives)?

thanks

Originally Posted by zoran119 i just wanted to check the load cycle count on my drives. is smartctl the correct way of doing that? i tried it and it said "SMART Disabled. Use option -s with argument 'on' to enable it." is it ok to enable it (just checking, don't want to stuff up the drives)? thanks

Have you tried running hdparm -I /dev/sda or hdparm -i /dev/sda to see what it reports about the 'SMART' status of the drive?. Those commands are safe to run.

Bill.

this is what i got (that i think is relevant)

Commands/features:
        Enabled Supported:
                SMART feature set
                Security Mode feature set
           *    Power Management feature set
           *    Write cache
           *    Look-ahead
           *    Host Protected Area feature set
           *    WRITE_BUFFER command
           *    READ_BUFFER command
           *    DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
                Power-Up In Standby feature set
           *    SET_FEATURES required to spinup after power up
                SET_MAX security extension
           *    Automatic Acoustic Management feature set
           *    Device Configuration Overlay feature set
           *    Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
           *    FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
           *    SMART error logging
           *    SMART self-test
           *    SMART Command Transport (SCT) feature set
           *    SCT Long Sector Access (AC1)
           *    SCT LBA Segment Access (AC2)
           *    SCT Error Recovery Control (AC3)
           *    SCT Features Control (AC4)
           *    SCT Data Tables (AC5)

so it seems that some of the smart capabilites are enabled, but i still don't know how to check load cycle count (or hours running and similar things)

thanks bill

I don't really know much about 'smartctl. but after reading around a bit, it seems that issuing that '-s on' flag to turn Smart monitoring on is safe and can be toggled. This thread uses it:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...tition-499942/

Bill.

Originally Posted by Ilgar Yes but what's wrong with external HDDs?

Nothing, but no HDD can be considered a safe backup strategy. Just look at the recent seagate issue. Your drive could fail within days or weeks of purchase.