ATA APM and NCQ support in FreeBSD atacontrol

[jonathan at kc8onw.net]

On Mon, May 12, 2008 03:23, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> 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=
>>>
>>> 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)?

That would probably confuse more existing users than it would help new
ones.  I don't think it would be worth renaming it unless the raid
functionality was moved to a separate command, which would be a pointless
bunch of work.

> 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.

Nope, I'm happy with FreeBSD.  This is more of a minor quirk than anything
else for me.  I figured I would see if anything had changed since the last
mailing list messages I found where well over a year old.

>> 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).

Where is this list?  I did a quick search but couldn't find it.

> 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.

No argument here.  Soren does an incredible job maintaining ATA as it is
and I am very grateful that he has put as much of his time into the
project as he has.  (Thanks Soren!)

Jonathan Stewart