Re: Stopping USB HDD

[MJ <mafsys1234%gmail.com@localhost>]

On 25/08/2021 2:36 pm, Riza Dindir wrote:
> Hello Mark,
>
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2021 at 4:29 AM MJ <mafsys1234%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
> > On 25/08/2021 1:25 am, Riza Dindir wrote:
> > > Hello
> > >
> > > When I power off the system (with poweroff) the connected USB HDD
> > > makes a noise that comes from the heads. A distinct clicking noise.
> >
> > Does the external USB eventually power down or continue spinning?
>
> The drive still spins. Yesterday i did use shutdown and waited a
> minute or so, the drive was still spinning, then used the laptop power
> button to power down. I did not hear that clicking noise.
>
> I will not be using poweroff but use shutdown. I think this is the
> proper way of stopping the system.
>
> This drive has the main NetBSD OS in it (I will be explaining the
> reason for that below). Would that be a problem? I am thinking when
> you shutdown, the system will unmount everything and then wait for the
> user to reset or power down the system, no matter what. Would that
> assumption be correct?

Hi Riza,

Oh, so the external disk has the OS on it? Well that changes the approach.

You're correct, while powering down the system it is still, potentially, syncing disks.

> The reason for this setup is this; I have had enough of windows not
> being able to update the system for a month or more, will keep windows
> until i can use zoom, hangouts or some other video conferencing system
> using NetBSD.
>
> As I said, I will be using NetBSD as my main OS. So I have bought a
> caddy and a drive. The caddy did run and install the system, then when
> it came to booting the system it hangs at the very beginning, when it
> displays the mem [memRangeList] (which i think these are memory ranges
> in the format "hexNumber-hexNumber") or sometimes after the boot menu,
> when the system says "default boot twice, skipping" and starts to go
> through memory and provides a spinning gadget in between those
> numbers.
>
> I think the caddy has some issues. To save me from some hardware
> failure, I had a hdd enclosing (usb 3) sitting around, and popped the
> drive in there and started having no problems booting. Although I am
> still seeing that mem [0x0000-0x1000 0xaaaa-0xbbbb ...] output (the
> numbers are not correct, I made them up, do not remember the exact
> numbers), but the system boots normally.
>
> I have also had problems with my radeon on-board screen card (r7 m265,
> which is not supported) and acpibat0. I disabled both in the
> boot.conf. I also have an atheros ar9565 wireless/bluetooth device,
> which is not recognized, but will be using my wired net connection,
> which works.

Yes, you're out of luck with that WiFi card.
See: https://bsd-hardware.info/?id=pci:168c-0036-1028-020c

It's supported by FreeBSD, though that's no help.

If you want to use WiFi, then you'll need a USB dongle with a supported device,
if you've got the port to spare and you'd like the option of WiFi.

> Currently I am using X11 using a vesa driver, and to my surprise it

It's old but it's good. You only run into problems, in my experience, when
driving big monitors.




> works nicely. I am using TWM and will stick with it, i configured that
> and will be writing some tools for virtual desktops and panels, as an
> exercise, if I find the time for it :) But TWM is pleasant for the
> moment (I had used it briefly in the past). Graham's twm page
> (http://www.custompc.plus.com/twm/twmrc.htm) was and is helpful, and
> shows that it can good looking as well :)

> > > I wanted to know if there is a way, when powering off the system, any
> > > usb hdd drive that is connected to the system be stopped properly, and
> > > the disk heads are parked?
> >
> > You can look at https://man.netbsd.org/atactl.8 and perhaps do something like this:
> >
> > 1. Unmount it.
> >
> > 2. Sleep it.
> >
> > 3. Power off the system.
> >
> > You could achieve this with a script.
>
> Yes, I was thinking the same, writing a script for that, in the rc
> system (probably). But I'm not sure yet, reading the guide, and the rc

If you create an rc script that has a "start" where it turns off spin down
and a "stop" which turns in on will work fine. rc.shutdown is called at, yes, shutdown :-)
to stop services, this would just be another service. You would want to ensure it's
the last or almost last script to run. See rcorder.(https://man.netbsd.org/NetBSD-1.6/rcorder.8)

> system architecture. The drive might be a scsi drive, or seen as a
> scsi drive. I will have to check the dmesg.


It should work. See here for some confirmation: https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-rmmedia.html#using-usb-flash-drives
(I know it's flash drives, but they're still drives attached to the USB bus).

I think the best you can hope for is to set the spin-down using atactl apm set 60, but you can experiment of
course. atactl setstandby 30 might suffice to allow the system to shut down then the device spin down.


Hopefully others chime in with more lateral thoughts. :-)

> > Cheers
> >
> > Mark.
>
> Kind Regards,
> Riza