Hdparm -Y /dev/sdb in /etc/rc.conf no effect

Question

Hello. I have added SSD disk to my laptop (/dev/sda), but I have kep old HDD (/dev/sdb).
Because HDD is rarely used, I decided to spare some power by putting this HDD to rest. So I checked out the command in terminal:
sudo hdparm -Y /dev/sdb
It worked. However, when I added
hdparm -Y /dev/sdb
to the bottom of /etc/rc.conf file, nothing happens.
Why is this and how can I debug that? Can I somehow prevent HDD spinning up in the first place?

Answer 1

siriusb wrote:Problem is that hdparm needs root privilage to run. So if you want that command invoked in ~/.xinitrc you have to write a script which asks for root password then execute hdparm.
There may be other ways I'm not aware of, but I'm not a guru either.
You can work around that with proper sudo configuration. Say, this should work for whole wheel group to be able to use sudo hdparm without root password:
%wheel ALL = NOPASSWD: /sbin/hdparm
Obviously could be done for other groups as well. Just an example.
technolog wrote:
I have come up with solution:
until [ "$(pidof X)" ]; do
sleep 1
done
sleep 10
hdparm -Y /dev/sdb
Is solution like this acceptable?
edit, nevermind, I'm just dumb looks good
edit2 actually... a script put this way will ask for a pid of a process, on whose creation it is waiting. Either I'm very very tired (which I am), or the logic is a bit faulty.
Last edited by meph (2012-01-29 16:08:24)