[Techtalk] battery life+kupdated+noflushd+devfs+2.4.20-9 (RH9)=much pulling of hair

[EevaJärvinen]

Once again, it seems I want something that is simple, to my mind, but
when I start going about it, something quite else happens.

I want the hd on my laptop to spin down when idle.  hdparm
theoretically does this, but since kernel is flushing buffers
(at very least access times) every five seconds or so, this spindown
never happens (ok, it does happen if no-one's logged in.  Some help,
sheesh).  Usually, my laptop doesn't swap very much at all (I use
mostly small-footprint apps), so I think having the disk spin down
after say, five minutes of inactivity, would help battery life a lot.

noflushd is supposed to fix this, but it needs devfs installed.  I
tried to configure my kernel source for this (standard RH9 2.4.20-9),
but it wouldn't compile with devfs.  Just running noflushd without
devfs makes kupdated go mad: it uses up all available processing
capacity, probably due to some conflict with noflushd.  Besides, devfs
is marked as experimental in make menuconfig, so I feel a bit squemish
about including this experimental technology into a working system.

What do I do?  Should I roll my own kernel from the very newest
sources from goodness knows where, or am I missing something very
basic?  Or is there an easier way of making kupdated behave of a
laptop?  


Eeva

--
 ...women are not obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely
apparelled by nature.  They can only attain these graces, without
which they may enjoy none of the delights of life, by the most tedious
discipline.

                                                  V. Woolf, Orlando