On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:57 PM, Chris Down <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 15 March 2013 05:56, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > yes, if I stay in the BIOS configuration the drive spins down and keeps > > sleeping. > > I'm more curious about the installer (or a bare bones Arch install) > than sitting in the BIOS. That makes it easier to differentiate Xfce > problems from problems in base packages or the kernel itself. > > > I tested it with a very old Suse, GNOME 2 and with Ubuntu Quantal, Xfce > > 4, there I get the same issue as for Arch, it spins down and up and down > > and up ... > > Both of these environments have a lot of daemons/etc running that may > wish to periodically probe drives in a way that causes it to spin up > for whatever reason. > > Best, > > Chris > You can also try to add to the kernel boot command the parameter `break=premount`. It will break very early in the booting process, so you can check if it is the kernel itself who probes the disk. Rodrigo.
