A work around for Linux users

[system]

Earlier this week, we reported how the Free Agent range had difficulty using the Linux operating system due to the power management system.
A Seagate diskspinner called Nathan Papadopulos said that all Seagate and Maxtor branded external storage drives feature a power management that places the drive into a sleep mode after 15 minutes of inactivity.
::ouch::

[techhelpbb]

@Earnesterin

Earlier this week, we reported how the Free Agent range had difficulty using the Linux operating system due to the power management system.
A Seagate diskspinner called Nathan Papadopulos said that all Seagate and Maxtor branded external storage drives feature a power management that places the drive into a sleep mode after 15 minutes of inactivity.
::ouch::

With the Seagate utilities you can change the relevant settings.

Otherwise Vixie cron up a job to write or touch a file on the mounted volume.

You can also change the threshold of the write cache to flush more frequently or less frequently (in Linux you can delay the writes for 24 hours I do it all the time, just remember if you don’t flush before you loose power your data is gone). Flush more frequently you keep your data and keep the drive awake (especially if you use a journaling partition). Flush less frequently you don’t care if the drive sleeps, but you might loose your data.

Also, the problem is not confined to Linux. The power management on the Seagate Free Agents is especially aggressive and can shorten the drive life even in Windows. I’d recommened tinkering with it if you leave the drive connected for long periods of time.

If you need more assistance on how to do this please let me know.

[techhelpbb]

@Slix

It’d be nice to be able to do all FRC programming tasks in Linux. Unfortunately, the LabVIEW-based Driver’s Station, cRio Imaging Tool, and others make that difficult.

I know someone was working on a Driver’s Station without these restrictions. What about the others? Could the imaging tool’s functionality be reimplemented in some cross-platform way?

For just the build environment you could create a build environment in Windows you RDP to and drop your source on through a network share.

All you need is a real license of Windows XP Professional, if you use XP Home you can use VNC.

You could also put the whole thing in a VMWare, Xen or KVM virtual machine and then don’t even need more harware (haven’t tried this in a while but it should work).

I know my team does most of it’s development in Eclipse with Java on Linux and Mac OSX. They tried to port the driver’s station with some success. However, even if you create that code I’m not convinced it’s entirely legal for competition use without specific approval.

[linuxboy]

@techhelpbb

I know my team does most of it’s development in Eclipse with Java on Linux and Mac OSX. They tried to port the driver’s station with some success. However, even if you create that code I’m not convinced it’s entirely legal for competition use without specific approval.

I can guarentee it isn’t legal for competition use, I’m not sure where the rule is, but, on the inspection checklist they check whether or not the voltage shows up in the driver station. If you are using something other than the driverstation, they will definitely have a problem with it, not to mention if the FTA has to troubleshoot your connection on the field. That said, I’m trying to recreate a Driver Station from looking at packet captures, and might test it at an offseason.

• Oliver