I just received a new My book Live after a RMA (WD support said that my last drive had a strange hardware problem).
The new factory-clean hd has the same problems: it spins up randomly with no one using it.
Following some online help ( http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/forum/t-583096/mbl-never-sleeps-very-long)) I got to let the HD sleeps for some minutes but never too many.
I decided to try to understand what is going on so I tried to SSH in call:
echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/block_dump
I waited for the drive to spin down and then to spin up again. Then I called:
dmesg -c
…and got this results:
pidof(6847): dirtied inode 10627 (exe) on proc
pidof(6847): dirtied inode 10630 (exe) on proc
pidof(6847): dirtied inode 10633 (exe) on proc
pidof(6847): dirtied inode 10636 (exe) on proc
touch(6882): dirtied inode 10684 (standby) on tmpfs
Calling led_set_blink with value x
nmbd(4650): dirtied inode 10762 (browse.dat.) on tmpfs
nmbd(4650): dirtied inode 11039 (browse.dat.) on tmpfs
dhclient-script(7484): dirtied inode 87428 (resolv.conf.dhclient-new) on md1
mv(7491): dirtied inode 87829 (?) on md1
touch(7504): dirtied inode 11066 (allow.conf) on tmpfs
ps(7511): dirtied inode 9850 (2) on proc
ps(7511): dirtied inode 9995 (2) on proc
kjournald(379): WRITE block 3080192 on md1
md1_raid1(377): WRITE block 3999616 on sda2
md1_raid1(377): WRITE block 3999616 on sda1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1579152 on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1579160 on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1579168 on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1579176 on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1579184 on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1579192 on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1579200 on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1579208 on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1579216 on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1579224 on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1579232 on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1579240 on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1579248 on md1
Calling led_set_blink with value x
md1_raid1(377): WRITE block 3999616 on sda2
md1_raid1(377): WRITE block 3999616 on sda1
I think that the first 6 lines should be referred to the spin down process.
So the problem here is maybe the kjournald that wrote on md1?
…hope that someone is more skilled than me!
I am trying to figure out those
Little update… (I hope this may be usefull to someone else)
I spent a few more hours on this issue…
I disabled the autoreconnect network drive on my windows 7 laptop, but this was useless.
I disabled some services (such as orion, netatalk, upnp_nas, mDNSresponder, avahi-demon) with the following command:
update-rc.d -f SERVICENAME remove
This didn’t make so much difference…
So I checked my dmesg log again… My attention went on the first operation on non tmpfs: dhclient-script. I found that the script is related to dhcp stuff and that it creates a new file and then overwrite the old one with a movefile (mv operation). So I tried to set a static network setup (using the web gui).
TA DA! It seems to work! 
My MBL is now sleeping for 5 hours!
I do not know why that dhcp script modifies its configuration file (with a new identical file)…
I will try to renable some services (such as dlna) and see if the problem reappears…
…And I will need to send my perfectly working harddisk to WD that coulnd’t find the problem and let me think that it was an hardware problem!
Your lucky, I’ve been throguh the thread disabling most of the services and the most I can get is a few hours of sleep.
What’s annoying me most is that everytime it tries to sleep it gets woke up 7 seconds later, then is running for 15mins (I altered the sleep time), then will go into ‘proper’ sleep for a few hours.
MyBookLive logger: exit standby after 7 (since 2014-05-09 21:19:29.537675913 +0100)
How can I find out what’s causing these 7 second wakeups?
May 21 21:48:17 MyBookLive logger: exit standby after 6 (since 2014-05-21 21:48:11.833707277 +0100)
May 21 21:58:36 MyBookLive logger: exit standby after 14 (since 2014-05-21 21:58:22.569707740 +0100)
May 21 22:09:00 MyBookLive logger: exit standby after 19 (since 2014-05-21 22:08:41.737707416 +0100)
May 21 22:19:23 MyBookLive logger: exit standby after 18 (since 2014-05-21 22:19:05.949706909 +0100)
May 21 22:29:35 MyBookLive logger: exit standby after 7 (since 2014-05-21 22:29:28.405706835 +0100)
May 22 03:00:08 MyBookLive logger: exit standby after 15628 (since 2014-05-21 22:39:40.037707434 +0100)
Its getting silly, going into standyby only to wake up a few seconds later. I’ve also noticed that even when in standby and nothing else powered on on the network, the ethernet activity light is flashing every 20 seconds or so.
Top shows nothing unusual, I’ve tried all this to stop things yet its making no difference:
/etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server stop
/etc/init.d/nfs-common stop
/etc/init.d/netatalk stop
/etc/init.d/portmap stop
/etc/init.d/upnp_nas stop
/etc/init.d/mDNSResponder stop
/etc/init.d/avahi-daemon stop
/etc/init.d/orion stop
Anyone have any idea, or should I just give up and return it?
QuitButton wrote: the ethernet activity light is flashing every 20 seconds or so.
That’s normal for ANY network device.
Any broadcast sent by any other device on your network will cause every device’s LED to flash.
Did you try with
echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/block_dump
dmesg -c
echo 0 >/proc/sys/vm/block_dump
what dmesg says?
MyBookLive:~# echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/block_dump
MyBookLive:~# dmesg -c
Calling led_set_blink with value x
Calling led_set_blink with value x
Calling led_set_blink with value x
Calling led_set_blink with value x
Calling led_set_blink with value x
Calling led_set_blink with value x
MyBookLive:~# echo 0 >/proc/sys/vm/block_dump
MyBookLive:~# dmesg
That any use? It means nothing to me.
Top shows:
top - 19:34:28 up 2 days, 20:04, 1 user, load average: 1.07, 1.03, 1.00
Tasks: 59 total, 1 running, 58 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.3%us, 0.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.3%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 253632k total, 237184k used, 16448k free, 22720k buffers
Swap: 500608k total, 0k used, 500608k free, 138944k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
5948 root 20 0 5056 3392 2368 R 0.7 1.3 0:00.07 top
1 root 20 0 4352 2432 1728 S 0.0 1.0 0:01.50 init
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
and a load of other sleeping processes. What’s most annoying is how many ‘exit standby after 7’ events there are. I’m thinking that whatever actually puts the drive into standby, is also causing it to wake up 7 seconds later. Does that make any sense?
I’m not an expert, but…
Those messages are written when the MBL spins up (or down): they means I’m chaning the color of the front led.
Did you MBL spins up/down 6 times? How much time passed between the two echo commands?
Maybe something else than a write on disk is happening. What is the full log of the top command? Just 3 rows?
Do you have a static IP or do you use DHCP? I fix one spinup problem by setting a static IP.
Do you have a secondary DNS in the static IP configuration? WD Support says to have just 1 DNS.
Hmmm…
One of my PC’s, running Windows 7, is waking the drive on a regular basis. The others don’t. I can’t think of anything different with the setup on the different PCs that would wake up the NAS so regulary.
Looking at the output from dmesg I’m seeing this:
**NAS enters standby**
Calling led_set_blink with value x
nmbd(4053): dirtied inode 72573 (browse.dat.) on tmpfs
nmbd(4053): dirtied inode 72579 (browse.dat.) on tmpfs
**20 seconds after standby**
smbd(1684): dirtied inode 86669 (smbpasswd) on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1586192 on md1
md1_raid1(377): WRITE block 3999616 on sda2
md1_raid1(377): WRITE block 3999616 on sda1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1586200 on md1
kjournald(379): WRITE block 1586208 on md1
Calling led_set_blink with value x
md1_raid1(377): WRITE block 3999616 on sda2
md1_raid1(377): WRITE block 3999616 on sda1
which seems to explain why the drive comes out of standy… leaving the question Why? What does smbpasswd do? I don’t have any passwords set on the network. Why would one PC be calling smbpasswd (or whatever it does) and all the others don’t?
Confused.
QuitButton wrote:which seems to explain why the drive comes out of standy… leaving the question Why? What does smbpasswd do? I don’t have any passwords set on the network. Why would one PC be calling smbpasswd (or whatever it does) and all the others don’t?
Confused.
Windows doesn’t “Call” smbpasswd. It’s the local process “smbd” that’s accessing the smbpasswd file. Seems a symptom of some client just logging into your drive – repeatedly.
I have the same experience with my QNAP, but for some reason, my PC leaves the WDs alone.
Do you have mapped drives?
No mapped drives no, if it was that simple I’d of solved it by now.
Is there anyway of logging what’s going on with smbd so I can narrow down what’s calling it? There’s nothing on that PC I can think of that would wake up the NAS as often as it is doing. I’ve done the lmcompatability registry hack as per http://community.wd.com/t5/My-Book-Live/My-book-live-never-sleeps/td-p/199912/page/17 and set a static IP, but that’s made no difference, killed all the background apps that might be looking at the drive and still its waking up the NAS shortly after it sleeps.
the only thing i found to make it sleep when i am not using it I uninstalled bonjour and found a program called ServiceTray http://www.coretechnologies.com/products/ServiceTray/ add service Tcp/ip netbios helper it makes a desktop icon or have it start with windows cick it and turn it off to sleep on to use it works for me. If it sleeps with computer off this should work
