[linuxiran] Re: [Kde-i18n-fa] KDE DCOP & HDD spin down

[Aryan Ameri]

On Tuesday 03 June 2003 09:47, Amin Abbaspour wrote:
> Hi Aryan,
>
> You know, for power saving reasons there is a daemon called
> "noflushd" than tries to power off the HDD motor, while there is no
> IO. This is a matter on laptops...
>
> DCOP server, is a daemon like process that starts when ever you run a
> KDE based application. Start a KDE program in a non KDE desktop's
> xterm and see that before the starting of the program DCOP comes up
> and says "DCOP up and running".
>
> I don't know exactly what is DCOP responsible to do, but I guess it
> manages Kpart and maybe Klipborad of KDE applications.
>
> This DCOP server, tries to update file system Inodes, every now and
> then so poor noflushd think that there is always I/O but in fact this
> is not I/O, It's just a kind of update like touch.
>
> Mounting with option noatime, lets the mounted file system to ignore
> these requests, and HDD spin downs well.

Well, I was not aware of the problems that DCOP makes, because 
(unknowingly, or maybe by Debian's default), I had my filesystem 
mounted as 'noatime'. 


> By the way is your laptop Linux compatible? I'm sure you had problems
> with is especially in Power Management. Kernel 2.5 as you might now,
> is going to have great features for laptops like hibernation and
> sleep mode no name a few. As you know was not able to compile new
> kernel in my Red hat box with various GCC's and Kernel's and I might
> port it to Debian in coming days. If you can compile the kernel with
> out gcc's bugs, try 2.5.69. It will be great for sure.


Well, don't be so sure, I didn't have any problems with my laptop. Yes, 
you might call it "Linux compatible", I didn't have any problems with 
installing GNU/Linux on it.

My notebook is a IBM A31 which I bought last December. IBM's machines 
are a tad overpriced, when comparing to the competition. But you get 
what you pay for, it is rock solid. Power management worked on it out 
of the box, I close the laptop, it goes automatically to sleep mode, I 
open it, it automatically wakes up. When battery is low, it again 
automatically goes to suspend. It's perfect. 

The reason is that IBM uses OS independent features, for managing it's 
machines. Unlike other laptops, IBM does not rely on Windows for power 
management and such things. This approach is a bit more expensive for 
the manufacturer, but as you can see, it pays off. 


The only thing in this laptop which doesn't work in Linux is the Modem, 
which is a winmodem. I don't use the modem, so it is not a problem for 
me, but on march this year, I contacted IBM and complained about lack 
of support for modem under Linux. They officially apologised for this, 
and told me that they can't do anything about it, because the modem is 
manufactured by Agere/Lucent which refuses to support Linux. IBM 
support guy, even told me that they have treatend Lucent that they will 
remove the modem if they don't make a linux driver, but it seems 
Agere/Lucent still refuses to make a Linux driver. I was satisfied with 
IBM's answer.

And about running a development kernel, I totally disagree with you. I 
will never run a development kernel on a production system. Considering 
the stability problems that 2.4 faced in it's early stages, I don't 
think I will even touch 2.6 until 2.6.12 or something like that. I am 
happily using 2.4.20 here, and my parents are using a 2.2 kernel. (2.2 
is still more stable than 2.4). Actually, kernel is the only piece of 
software, which I am resist upgrading as much as possible.  Anyway 
people have different choices, and free software is all about having 
choice.

Peace

PS: I brought the subject back to mailing list, because I thought it is 
on-topic.
-- 
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Aryan Ameri