Subject: Optimizations for z50
To: None <port-hpcmips@netbsd.org>
From: Bryan Vyhmeister <bsd@hub3.net>
List: port-hpcmips
Date: 02/19/2003 21:22:53
The thread I started and the other threads dealing with CF/MD/other 
storage mediums have been quite informative. My question now is what 
are ways to optimize battery life and number of writes to CF. One of my 
z50s finally came this morning and I decided that this one is going to 
run from a 512MB Transcend 25X CF memory card. When the other one comes 
it will run from my 1GB Microdrive.

I added noatime and nodevmtime to fstab. Are soft updates a good or bad 
thing in this situation? Does suspend/resume make any difference when 
soft updates are enabled?

I have the following daily.conf to only have minimal writes:

# Add local overrides below
#
find_core=NO
expire_news=NO
purge_accounting=NO
run_msgs=NO
run_calendar=YES
check_uucp=NO
check_disks=YES
check_mailq=YES
check_network=YES
run_fsck=NO
run_rdist=NO
run_security=YES
run_skeyaudit=NO

And I have the following weekly.conf for the same reason:

# Add local overrides below
#
rebuild_locatedb=NO


As far as suspend and resume goes, is suspended state all that much 
better on battery conservation? It doesn't seem like it goes into all 
that "deep" of a suspend. I think the Microdrive was still spinning 
although I couldn't tell for sure if it was the Microdrive or something 
else. I recompiled the kernel with the LCD suspend option and now that 
works fine.

I suspended the z50 while I was in X earlier today and when I brought 
it back up several hours later I had eight or so vertical bars and I 
couldn't get anything to respond. I had to do a reset by removing the 
battery and power cord. Is this possibly symptomatic of me running 
1.6.1_RC2 with X from 1.6? By the way, I am running the ion wm.

Thank you for your help. I appreciate the helpful attitude on the 
NetBSD lists.

Bryan