LSI 3081E-R disks spindown problem

[ChriZathens]

Hello guys
I recently got from ebay an LSI SAS 3081E-R Controller. Yesterday finally found some time and installed it on my NAS. Everything is working great, speed increased (cause i had half of my disks on a pci controller) etc
The thing is that disks don't seem to spindown. I have set them to 20 minutes but it does not seem to work...
For the time being I created a script which spins down the disks manually:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
camcontrol devlist | awk -F\( '{print $2'} | awk -F\, '{print $1}' |while read LINE
do
echo "stopping disk $LINE"
camcontrol stop $LINE
done
echo "done.."
sleep 5

but obviously it is not an ideal solution..
Anyone has any ideas?
@raulfg: I know you were using this controller until recently. Was spindown working for you?

[raulfg3]

I know you were using this controller until recently. Was spindown working for you?

no, do not work for me, but I do not test to find what was the problem, and because only support 2TB disk in size ( and I have 3TB disk) I change it recently by new one ( see my signature).

[ChriZathens]

OK, I see...
Thanks for your input!
I will try to find out why they don't spindown...
BTW, with your new LSI 9211-8i, do disks spin down?

[raulfg3]

with your new LSI 9211-8i, do disks spin down?

still not tested, I wait to next holydays to test.

[ChriZathens]

After googling for a while, I'm still stuck..
There seems to be a compatibility issue with the LSI drivers and the disks are not recognized 100% correctly...
Perhaps the experimental builds deal with the issue?
Anyways, please let me know if you find a way around this..

[cancerman]

Do you have DLNA turned on? I seem to remember that getting in the way of spindown. Start with no services running and see if it spins down.

[ChriZathens]

Hello and thanks for trying to help!!!
Unfortunatelly I don't have DLNA on... The only services I use are cifs/smb, nfs, ssh and ftp.

[sodalimon]

Hi...
I noticed the same problem some time ago but then I thought, my configuration was the problem after some series of updates.

Then somehow I realized it was about my upgrade to the control card.
Right before embarking on upgrading my firmware, I did some additional research and found out that the problem was not NAS4Free based but LSI and FreeBSD...

Many people complain about the issue. Some try all kinds of scripts (which I find way off to be a solution)...

What I learned? People with 9211-8i's have the same problem too (when I decided to upgrade, then I found out after a web search)...

What I wasn't able to find out?
Why people do not care.

Is there not a real solution like drivers, f/w, etc?
Or are we just a small portion of people having this issue? (So it can be fixed somehow)
Or is it about awareness of the issue?
Is it the drives? (Not likely in my opinion)

It's hard for me to believe that FreeBSD community would have something to do with faulty drivers. Yet the issue is clear as day. By the way, smart data seems missing as well...

I really need to solve this one, 100W consumption is way too much for me to leave the server on all day.
I can get back to the onboard SATA ports (which always work fine). But I want (need) to add new drives and I don't want to have some drives of the pool act differently (and unnecessarily consume energy).

Facts:
I haven't updated my LSI f/w yet. Maybe it's not that mainstream because their f/w is not from the ages of Ceaser
My drives are SV35 2TB (ST2000VX000) CV22 (in a 6-way RAIDZ2)

Right at the moment, I'm looking for a control card that should properly let the drives to sleep...

Anyone? Ideas?

[ChriZathens]

I think that for the moment noone can offer you(us) a solution...
The workaround which is OK for now, at least for me, is the following:
1. Create an executable file using the small script I posted above, place it in your data folder. I named it diskstop
2. Create a postinit script to copy it from your data folder to /tmp
3 Create a cron job to run /tmp/diskstop each x time (I have it 30 minutes)

Do not omit step 2. I was running the script from my data folder and since it was trying to stop the disks where the data folder is located, they were not stopping (duhhhh....)
I know it is not the best, but even while on a large file transfer stopping the disks will only cause a few seconds delay (at least I haven't noticed otherwise..)

[sodalimon]

I think that for the moment noone can offer you(us) a solution...
The workaround which is OK for now, at least for me, is the following:
1. Create an executable file using the small script I posted above, place it in your data folder. I named it diskstop
2. Create a postinit script to copy it from your data folder to /tmp
3 Create a cron job to run /tmp/diskstop each x time (I have it 30 minutes)

Do not omit step 2. I was running the script from my data folder and since it was trying to stop the disks where the data folder is located, they were not stopping (duhhhh....)
I know it is not the best, but even while on a large file transfer stopping the disks will only cause a few seconds delay (at least I haven't noticed otherwise..)

First of all, thanks for the quick reply

I was wondering about the impact of stopping disks in the middle of activity such as transfers and scrubs etc.
If it really works the way you mentioned, then choosing a smart period for the script to run might solve the problems.

I guess I'll try and create something that checks on the disk activity before embarking on stop commands.

Thanks again for your support
And have a nice day...

[ChriZathens]

To be honest I haven't tested it while on a scrub..(which also reminds me that I should run a scrub in the next days)
But since scrub jobs are not an everyday job, you can easily select to disable that cron job for the time of the scrubbing and then enable it again. I scrub every 40-45 days, so not a big deal to untick "Enable" in the cron job.

[sodalimon]

You make it sound really good, I must admit...
By the way, I'm also considering the spindown install and scripting method (which works fine too).
But I can say, I kinda like this one better Less to mess with

Until some nice soul implements the spindown into the NAS4free install...

Thanks for the kind support...

[ChriZathens]

To be honest I haven't tested it while on a scrub..(which also reminds me that I should run a scrub in the next days)
But since scrub jobs are not an everyday job, you can easily select to disable that cron job for the time of the scrubbing and then enable it again. I scrub every 40-45 days, so not a big deal to untick "Enable" in the cron job.

I created a small script today which stops the disks using camcontrol, but also checks if a scrub is in process. In case there is a scrub in process, or a disk is already stoppped it skips
If you like, find it here:

viewtopic.php?f=70&t=6191

[drdoo]

I have an IBM M1015 and use the package spindown.
My disk spindown no problem.

Not sure if this would work on other cards to.

Log in to ssh and type;
pkg_add -r spindown
Check the syntax to put your disk into spindown.