oracular (8) hd-idle.8.gz

Provided by: hd-idle_1.21+ds-1_amd64 bug

NAME

       hd-idle - spin down idle hard disks

SYNOPSIS

       hd-idle [options]

DESCRIPTION

       hd-idle is a utility program for spinning down external disks after a period of idle time.
       Since most external IDE disk enclosures don't  support  setting  the  IDE  idle  timer,  a
       program like hd-idle is required to spin down idle disks automatically.

       A  word  of  caution:  hard  disks don't like spinning up too often. Laptop disks are more
       robust in this respect than desktop disks but if you set your disks to spin down  after  a
       few  seconds you may damage the disk over time due to the stress the spin-up causes on the
       spindle motor and bearings. It seems that manufacturers recommend a minimum idle  time  of
       3-5 minutes, the default in hd-idle is 10 minutes.

OPTIONS

       -a name
              Set  device name of disks for subsequent idle-time parameters (-i).  This parameter
              is optional in the sense that there's a default entry for all disks which  are  not
              named  otherwise  by  using  this  parameter.  This  can  also  be  a symlink (e.g.
              /dev/disk/by-uuid/...)

       -i idle_time
              Idle time in seconds for the currently named disk(s) (-a <name>) or for all  disks.
              Setting this value to "0" will never spin down the disk(s).

       -c command_type
              Api call to stop the device. Possible values are "scsi" (default value) and "ata".

       -p power_condition
              Power  condition  to  send  with the issued SCSI START STOP UNIT command.  Possible
              values are "0-15" (inclusive). The default  value  of  "0"  works  fine  for  disks
              accessible  via  the  SCSI  layer  (USB,  IEEE1394, ...), but it will *NOT* work as
              intended with real SCSI /  SAS  disks.  A  stopped  SAS  disk  will  not  start  up
              automatically  on  access,  but requires a startup command for reactivation. Useful
              values for  SAS disks are "2" for idle and "3" for standby.

       -s symlink_policy
              Set the policy to resolve symlinks for devices. If set to "0", symlinks are resolve
              only  on start. If set to "1", symlinks are also resolved on runtime until success.
              By default symlinks are only resolve on start.  If the symlink doesn't resolve to a
              device, the default configuration will be applied.

       -l logfile
              Name  of  logfile  (written  only  after a disk has spun up). Please note that this
              option might cause the disk which holds the logfile to spin up just because another
              disk  had  some  activity. This option should not be used on systems with more than
              one disk except for tuning purposes. On single-disk systems, this option should not
              cause any additional spinups.

       -t disk
              Spin-down  the  specified  disk immediately and exit. It can be used in combination
              with -c to specify the command type.

       -d     Debug mode. It will print  debugging  info  to  stdout/stderr  (/var/log/syslog  if
              started as with systemctl)

       -h     Print usage information.

DISK SELECTION

       The  parameter  -a  can be used to set a filter on the disk's device name (omit /dev/) for
       subsequent idle-time settings. The default is all disks:

       1)     A -i option before the first -a option will set the default idle time.

       2)     In order to disable spin-down of disks per default, and then re-enable spin-down on
              selected disks, set the default idle time to 0.

EXAMPLE

       hd-idle -i 0 -a sda -i 300 -a sdb -i 1200

       This  example sets the default idle time to 0 (meaning hd-idle will never try to spin down
       a disk) and default "scsi" api command, then sets explicit idle times for disks which have
       the string "sda" or "sdb" in their device name.

EXAMPLE

       hd-idle -i 0 -c ata -a sda -i 300 -a sdb -i 1200 -c scsi

       This  example sets the default idle time to 0 (meaning hd-idle will never try to spin down
       a disk) and default "ata" api command, then sets explicit idle times for disks which  have
       the string "sda" or "sdb" in their device name and sets "sdb" to use "ata" api command.

       The option -c allows to set the api call that sends the spindown command.  Possible values
       are "scsi" (the default value) or "ata".

AUTHOR

       hd-idle was written by Andoni del Olmo <andoni.delolmo@gmail> based on Chistian  Mueller's
       <chris@mumac.de> work.

       This manual page was written by Christian Mueller <chris@mumac.de>, for the Debian project
       (and may be used by others).

       Modified by Andoni del Olmo <andoni.delolmo@gmail.com>.

                                        September 8, 2019                              HD-IDLE(8)