Something spinning my HD?

tormented_one · 02-08-2005, 11:09 PM

Okay I have an old m700 400mhz laptop and when idling with and withot anyone logged in. Sounds like the hard disk spins three times and the light blinks to the sounds. I had done the usual top..logs....etc and I think it has something to do with the keventd but not for sure. No errors or anything in the logs so I'm stumped. I'll post more info if needed. Can anyine help me find out what is spinning the disk?

shilo · 02-09-2005, 01:12 AM

Do you have a lot of memory? Maybe it is swap.

tormented_one · 02-09-2005, 01:56 AM

no I have almost 300meg, hardly ever use any significant swap space. Also not running anything not needed. Have plenty of free memory. Right before it happens til right after the third spin the keventd move to the top of top. Other than that I can't find anything starting/stoping. Happens every couple of minutes. Like I said there is nothing in the logs. I'm trying to find a way to hunt it down. Any suggestions?

kriton12 · 02-09-2005, 10:13 AM

Did you compile ACPI support in your kernel (or are you using one with that support compiled in)?
I'd double check your kernel configuration specifically in these parts and see if you can see anything there.

Also, try using the bare.i kernel which shouldn't have ACPI or APM support in it and see if that sound goes away.

Or, there is a way to pass an argument to the kernel to turn off the acpi features at boot up, but I don't remember what the parameter is.

Since it's a laptop, i'd imagine it is some type of power-management feature.

tormented_one · 02-09-2005, 02:50 PM

I have tried the acpi and apm in the kernel and I have used a bare.i kernel with no luck. To turn off acpi or apm on boot you pass acpi=off apm=off. To no availe. Right now I am using the stock 2.4.26 bare.i kernel and I have a working 2.6.10 and it does it on both.

shilo · 02-09-2005, 03:34 PM

In the same line of thought as kriton12, here is a website that may help. http://roub.net/blahg/archives/2004/...ntd_up_to.html . It also mentions appending noapic.

Also, I thought keventd was gone in the 2.6 kernels? Not working on my Slack box right now, so I can't check, but is it still keventd when you run 2.6.10? I probably just mis-understood something that I read before.