ATA APM and NCQ support in FreeBSD atacontrol

[jonathan at kc8onw.net]

On Mon, May 12, 2008 00:52, Ian Smith wrote:
> On Sun, 11 May 2008 jonathan at kc8onw.net wrote:
>
>> I found this PR (with patch) to add APM and acoustic management control
>> to atacontrol.  The PR was opened in May 2005 has not been changed since
>>  December 2006 and is still open.
>> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=81692&cat=
>>
>> I have not been able to find much of anything on SATA NCQ in FreeBSD
>> newer than 2005 or 2006 does anyone know anything newer?
>
> As for APM and AAM, that functionality is handled by sysutils/ataidle,
> which that PR appears - on a quick glance - to pretty well duplicate.
>
> I see phk@ recently added an 'atacontrol spindown' command to HEAD and
> RELENG_7 that appears to offer similar functionality to 'ataidle -S
> standby_mins' or 'ataidle -I idle_mins', though specified in seconds
> instead.  However this doesn't address acoustic management.
>
> Or is ataidle broken for SATA disks?

I think the idea was to put the ability to control it where people see it
first.  I expected to be able to control NCQ, APM, and acoustic management
from atacontrol considering it listed whether they were enabled or not. 
ataidle is easy enough to find, I won't deny, but why make users do the
google search and install a port when there is (what looks to me) a fairly
simple patch that can be added to the base system.  Either way it would be
good to get the PR closed one way or the other considering the backlog...

Jonathan Stewart