ATA APM and NCQ support in FreeBSD atacontrol

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 03:16:10AM -0400, jonathan at kc8onw.net wrote:
> 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. 

Well, atacontrol(8) does let you control many things, but most pertain
to ataraid(4).  Otherwise, it acts purely as an ATA/SATA information
utility; maybe it should be renamed atainfo(8)?

The expectation that the tool should be able to control those things is
legitimate, but if this is something you absolutely *need*, then I would
recommend going with Linux instead.  Their libata has support for all of
the above, and has userland applications to control said features.

> 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...

There are a "decent" number of PRs pertaining to ATA/SATA stuff in
FreeBSD, some going back over 2 years which fix very severe bugs in RAID
(see my Common Issues list for examples).

Your cries are heard by some, but I'm left believing Soren is just super
busy with real life.  I consider this even more justification that the
ATA layer in FreeBSD needs additional eyes familiar with it, and not
just a single person.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |