Energy plan needed; Suspend to RAM; or Suspend to Disk S3 S5

[waltergr]

I do understand that fixing software is always more important than adding new features, but
this is - with all due respect - a major issue (no possibility to send the system to S3 or S5 to save energy).

acpiconf -s 3 will do the trick of putting the system to sleep.
wakeonLan should start the system again

You can always add something nice and fancy like "auto suspend" to the web
interface, but for now it would be perfect if you could just NOT remove
the (already working) WOL functionality of FreeBSD 8.

This might be minor, but it's also trivial. NAS4Free is mostly used by users needing EXACTLY this feature. I
am actually looking for somthing else because of this.

Please fix it. NAS4Free is an amazing piece of software. It MUST not miss such basic functionality.
Thanks Walter

[Onichan]

I would agree a suspend would be nice, but I don't think it is critical as you seem to think. The NAS should be idleing most the time anyways. I am using a i5-3450 which idles at 54.4W which would amount to ~1.3kWh a day of idleing and at the averge of ~12c/kWh it comes to ~$55.78 a year which isn't that much. Now yes there are other things like hard drives and fans and with all of them combined sure you can save a few bucks, but I don't think its quite so important.
Edit: Forgot part of the calculations.

[waltergr]

The costs depends on the location you are, we now have around 0,25€/kWh and if you use an Atom processor (low Power) you still get around 190KWh/Y and this will be 46€. If there is the possibility to reduce this that would be great.

[aliassund]

I fully agree. It would be a competitive feature, "NAS4Free Green". I've the same problem with some 60-70 euros that could be reduced to 10-15 euros yearly given the current usage pattern. If I add all other equipment I have there is certainly a big incentive for making all of them greaner.

[jamaroney]

acpiconf -s 3 will do the trick of putting the system to sleep.

It seems that acpiconf is not a part of my version of N4F: 9.0.0.1 - Sandstorm (revision 249)

Is it part of any other N4F build?

[apollo567]

I support this feature request !

[daoyama]

acpiconf -s 3 will do the trick of putting the system to sleep.

It seems that acpiconf is not a part of my version of N4F: 9.0.0.1 - Sandstorm (revision 249)

Is it part of any other N4F build?

Now we have add acpiconf to NAS4Free at r350. However, WebGUI is not yet provided, so CLI only.
Please wait next build.

Thank you.

[jamaroney]

Looking forward to it with WebGUI. Thanks!

[apollo567]

acpiconf -s 3 will do the trick of putting the system to sleep.

works perfect with release 358

wakeonLan should start the system again

But how do I get an automatic awakening if I want to access the NAS e.g. with Windows Explorer through network ?
How can I get an automatic 'goto sleep' after a certain time period with no activity / network access ?

Kind regards
apollo

[LeeJS]

I've just set NAS4Free up with an expectation that this kind of functionality would be available. It's not the end of the world that it's not as I can make do until it is but I really do think these kind of 'Green' credentials would be a real selling point for the project.

Ideally I would like to see a scheduler built in to the GUI to specify default on/off times (provided no activity) as well as a 'zero activity' timer that will auto s(x) sleep after y minutes of inactivty. Powering back up on file access request would be ideal but I'm not sure that ability even exists so for now my Android WOL app can send the necessary magic packet when I want to fire it up. This is how my HTPC is set up and it works really well.

I don't know if the devs actively monitor the boards so it would useful to get some feedback on this if they do. I'm sure it would be a great asset to a fantastic project.

Thanks.

[nicsergio]

I too am in favor of functionality, I think Nas4Free with this would be perfect..

thanks to the developers for the work

[Elclaudio]

hi there

+1000 for the suspend to ram. To be honest, I'm quiet surprised that it's not yet implemented properly. I've just build a nas with this hardware :

- Asrock B75M-DGS (EFI firmware v1.10)
- Intel Celeron G465
- 4 Gb DDR3
- Seasonic G-360 Power suplly
- Western Digital WD30EFR 3Tb Red

running with nas4free 9.1.0.1 - Sandstorm (revision 531)

I've tried the shell command "acpiconf -s 3", the system go to suspend state but power up by itself a few second later. I can use it normally via the web gui afterward but the locally connected monitor is blank (not a big issue for me, but still)

I've tried the instructions here ( hw.acpi.disable_on_poweroff="0" in loader.conf ) :

12.17.3.5 System Powers Up After Suspend or Shutdown
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO885 ... debug.html

but nothing changed. Also, I've tried Freenas 8.3.0 on the same hardware which go into suspend ok (blinking led) but never come back... I'm so stuck with this that I'm considering installing some windows server instead !

In the mean time, I would be happy to help the devs, making tests or anything to make this work since I've have some spare time now.

[Elclaudio]

anybody there ?

[ChriZathens]

If these features could be implemented it would be really great!!
I currently have set the cpu to minimum performance, same with the hdds plus they park after 30 minutes.
But the suspend feature, plus wol, configurable by the webui would be a perfect addition!

[nicsergio]

Unfortunately I do not work either running the command from the CLI: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1629

[Elclaudio]

I have good news, suspending in S3 is now working on my nas server 9.1.0.1 - Sandstorm (revision 531) and it stay in suspend / resume properly, even after hours in this mode. I have since disabled HDD spindown completly because S3 is working great. Don't ask me how I've done it because I don't really know how, it started to work by itself I've also made a whole script that is running on my router (with tomato usb firmware) detecting online / offline clients and suspend / wakeup the server accordingly. I may share it later.

[nicsergio]

Thank you, I've recently upgraded to revision 573: try again as soon as possible ..

your scrip also monitors the activities of the transmission daemon?

[nicsergio]

nothing to do, I tried but the behavior is always the same: the nas should properly be in standby mode (power LED flashes slowly) and the resume starts flashing continuously the LED of hard disk activity, but the system does not wake up properly (WebGUI is not accessible and the services too) and I have to restart ..

[Elclaudio]

maybe the acpi of your bios is broken somehow, I don't know if nas4free support it but freebsd allow loading a patched DSDT to replace / patch your current bios if broken, you may try this way, altough it's quiet complicated. Fisrt thing you may try is update your bios to see if it make a difference.

My script doesn't not monitor the transmission process right now, but I plan to add it later

[nicsergio]

Last week I unfortunately already updated the bios to the latest version ..

thanks for your help

[fritz]

Hi everybody,

I just provided a set of script to the community (viewtopic.php?f=70&t=2197)
One of them (manageAcpi.sh) should exactly fulfill the functions required here.
(suspend to RAM / resp. shutdown based on various conditions)
I also provided the script running on my DD-WRT router in order to wake the NAS automatically when required.

Regards,
fritz

[hastdotwhat]

Extending this discussion a bit, how effective is FreeBSD in terms of low-power operation? I'm using a Zotac ID-13 as a low-power network storage device, and although it's designed for low-power use with Nas4Free it never seems to go into any kind of power-saving mode. By this I don't mean S3 sleep but simply enough of a low-power mode that the fan switches off and the annoyingly bright blue light on the side of the case goes away. OK, maybe expecting to be able to disable the case bling is a bit much, but I'd have at least expected the fan to power down, given that the CPU is throttled down to 233MHz and is running at 1% load.

Any suggestions on what I should be looking for here? Should I be poking around in FreeBSD-level power settings, or is it at the Nas4Free level? There's a bunch of hints on FreeBSD tuning here, but also a somewhat dire warning that power management is not very reliably supported under FreeBSD. How much does Nas4Free do by default in terms of power-saving? For example is C2 state supported/enabled, or will it require messing with rc.conf? (I assume C3 will break things, and currently 'sysctl dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest' reports C1 as the lowest available). Or is this already enabled with powerd_flags="-a minimum -b minimum -n minimum"? But in that case this thread talks about conflicts between powerd and C-state settings. Argh!

[hastdotwhat]

Has anyone else got WOL working with any of the Zotac USFF PCs? According to this page you need to enable the LAN boot room (for PXE support), which also enables WOL support. It's also supported by the driver:

Code: Select all

> ifconfig -m
re0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
     options=8009b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LINKSTATE>
     capabilities=8399b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,\
                  WOL_UCAST,WOL_MCAST,WOL_MAGIC,LINKSTATE>
     // Generic RealTek NIC, WOL supported

However while doing an 'acpiconf -s 3' puts the machine to sleep, nothing apart from hitting the power button will wake it up again. In addition on wakeup it seems the storage volumes aren't remounted properly, the mount points exist in /mnt but there's no directory structure present below that. A reboot of the system fixes things.