Questions about Power Deamon

[globus999]

Hi,
The whole Power Deamon in FN8 is a bit of a mystery.
There is some info about it in the other forum http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=1451&hilit=powerd&start=10
but it is not clear if it applies to FN8.

Questions:

- Is Power Deamon still freezing FN8 console or has this bug been fixed?
- What are the "official" settings in FN8 if one enables Power Deamon?
- Where are those settings saved? In base/etc/rc.config? If so, why does it say that its contents get overwritten by the database? If so, how do I change the Power Deamon settings in the db? There is no interface to the db.
- What is the interaction between Power Deamon and the "HDD Standby" and "Advanced Power Management" settings for HDD's? Isnt Power Deamon also supposed to spin down disks in addition to control CPU frequency?

Appreciated!

 

[joeschmuck]

I am curious as well about what powerd brings to the table. How is it implemented (arguments set) in FreeNAS 8.0.1-RC1? I enabled it but I didn't see any changes to power consumption at all (over a 24 hour period), not a single watt was reduced or increased either. If one of the developers wouldn't mind sharing the answer that would be nice. Not sure if I am willing to try and scan all the build files to figure out what the arguments are. Maybe I'll try some manual changes to see how things react. If anyone has had some kind of system reaction (good or bad) with the selection of powerd with 8.0.1-RC1 or better, please post it.

Thanks,
-Mark

 

[sjieke]

In a search to find out what enabling powerd would do on my freenas box, I found this thread. So I also wan't to know what the effects are when we enable the power saving deamon. And also what is the effect on the other HDD standby settings.

Hoping someone has the answer...

 

[survive]

Hi guys,

I think the power daemon globus999 originally asked about has to do with processor speed (re: AMD's Cool 'n Quiet / Intel's Speedstep) not HDD spindown. When enabled you will see your processor slow down when lightly loaded. I don't think there is anything in the GUI that actually shows your current clock speed but I believe you can check a sysctl to get the current processor speed.

-Will

 

[joeschmuck]

I know when I tested it way back when the power consumption was marginally reduced but it was reduced none the less. I believe FreeBSD 8 must have already taken some action based on my CPU/hardware configuration but I could be wrong, maybe it was my MB just doing something on it's own.

My suggestion is to get a method to measure the power being consumed by your computer and see what happens with it disabled and enabled. I don't think it will make your system unstable however you never know.

 

[sjieke]

Thx for the answers, it clarifies some parts. So enabling it will let the CPU frequency adapt to the current needs.

The link to the HDD standby/spindown and the question of the effect powerd has on it comes from reading the 8.0.3 manual.
In table "Table 4.2b: Advanced Tab's Configuration Settings" (http://www.freenas.org/images/resou...8.0.3_guide.html#__RefHeading__1921_145473606) it says:

Enable powerd (Power Saving Daemon)
checkbox
used to spin down disks, see powerd(8); this forum post demonstrates how to determine if a drive has spun down

So the question "what is the impact of powerd on disk standby/spindown?" still remains. Currently I haven't enabled powerd, but my disks do spin down (verified using the camcontrol command specified in the forum post they mention in the manual)

 

[joeschmuck]

I have just retested the Power Savings Daemon on my system and there is no benefit in power savings. I also do not have a video card to which I have read the setting should also reduce some power consumption there as well. I know earlier versions of FreeNAS did spin down the hard drive but I don't recall the time periodicity. Hopefully that is not the case still but it may be. If you do enable this feature, pay attention to if the drives are spinning down too frequently as that would not be good for the life of the drives.

 

[mchiao]

Just installed 8.0.4 release.

I've tried this twice and everytime when I turned on the powerd, the system freeze shortly after.

Here is my system config:
Biostar A770E3 with 16GB. Athlon CPU
SATA2 Serial ATA II PCI-Express RAID Controller Card (Silicon Image SIL3132) with 2 2TB drive (SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI).
HighPoint Rocket 620-OEM PCI-Express 2.0 x1 Low Profile SATA III with 2 2TB drive (SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI)
Onboard SATA with 4xHitachi Deskstar 2 TB 3.5-Inch CoolSpin RPM SATA III 6Gbps 32 MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0F12117 and 2xSeagate ST2000DL003 2TB SATA3 5900rpm 64MB NCQ Hard Drive

Can the two sata pci-e card be the problem?

Thanks