Short tip: configure hard drive standby with systemd

calendar Oct 11, 2014 · 1 min read · kurztipp  ·
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Hard drives can be forced into hibernate using hdparm. While it was quite easy to implement automatic setting this hibernation values by inserting the appropriate command (hdparm -B intervall device) into /etc/rc.local (which was executed after the boot) on sysvinit-based Linux distributions this changed on newer systemd-based systems. It is a good idea to implement this behavior as a service.

First you need to create a system-wide service and activate and start it afterwards:

 1# vi /usr/lib/systemd/system/sda-spindown.service
 2[Unit]
 3Description=Set HDD spindown
 4
 5[Service]
 6Type=oneshot
 7ExecStart=/sbin/hdparm -B 241 /dev/sdb
 8RemainAfterExit=yes
 9
10[Install]
11WantedBy=multi-user.target
12
13ESC ZZ
14# systemctl daemon-reload
15# systemctl enable sda-spindown.service
16# systemctl start sda-spindown.service

You can verify that the value has been set successfully using the service management:

1# systemctl status sda-spindown.service
2sda-spindown.service - Fix excessive HDD parking frequency
3   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/sdd-spindown.service; enabled)
4   Active: active (exited) since Sa 2014-10-11 14:27:16 CEST; 3min 32s ago
5   Process: 4336 ExecStart=/sbin/hdparm -B 241 /dev/sda (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
6...

Many thanks to the following blog that gave me the tip: [click me!]

Another (probably nicer) solution is to create a udev rule: [click me!]

🙂

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