Mybook live (02.02 firmware) keeps waking up from sleep every 60s / 280s

Hi,

I want to put my MyBook in the basement together with my DSL router. HOwever, for this I need it to go to sleep reliably when there is no network traffic. Especially when there is no network (ie. my Gbit switch is turned off).

Hoever, it keeps waking up from sleep, even when the network is down and so there _cannot_ be any network traffic (see log below). It is noteworthy that the wake up process is quite regular (it wakes up roughly every 60 and then every 280 seconds).

What process(es) keep(s) waking the device? How do I stop this?

Thank you! :slight_smile:

Nov 2 07:48:51 localhost logger: /usr/local/sbin/monitorio.sh: waiting for system to become ready..
 Nov 2 07:48:56 localhost logger: /usr/local/sbin/monitorio.sh: waiting for system to become ready..
 Nov 2 07:49:01 localhost logger: /usr/local/sbin/monitorio.sh: waiting for system to become ready..
 Nov 2 16:51:51 localhost logger: /usr/local/sbin/monitorio.sh: waiting for system to become ready..
 Nov 2 16:51:55 localhost logger: Starting orion services: miocrawlerd, mediacrawlerd, communicationmanagerd
 Nov 2 17:05:05 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 17:06:08 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 2 17:17:17 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 17:21:27 localhost logger: exit standby after 250
 Nov 2 17:33:36 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 17:46:05 localhost logger: exit standby after 749
 Nov 2 18:25:15 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 18:26:18 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 2 18:37:26 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 19:01:03 localhost logger: exit standby after 1417
 Nov 2 19:16:14 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 19:17:17 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 2 19:28:25 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 19:31:19 localhost logger: exit standby after 174
 Nov 2 19:44:27 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 19:45:29 localhost logger: exit standby after 62
 Nov 2 19:56:38 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 20:01:18 localhost logger: exit standby after 280
 Nov 2 20:14:27 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 20:15:30 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 2 20:26:39 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 20:31:18 localhost logger: exit standby after 279
 Nov 2 20:44:27 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 20:45:29 localhost logger: exit standby after 62
 Nov 2 20:56:38 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 21:01:19 localhost logger: exit standby after 281
 Nov 2 21:14:27 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 21:15:30 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 2 21:45:52 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 21:46:55 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 2 21:58:04 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 22:01:19 localhost logger: exit standby after 195
 Nov 2 22:14:27 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 22:15:29 localhost logger: exit standby after 62
 Nov 2 22:26:38 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 22:31:19 localhost logger: exit standby after 281
 Nov 2 22:44:28 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 22:45:31 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 2 22:46:41 localhost kernel: eth0: link is down
 Nov 2 22:46:49 localhost kernel: eth0: link is down
 Nov 2 22:46:49 localhost kernel: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
 Nov 2 22:57:40 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 23:01:19 localhost logger: exit standby after 219
 Nov 2 23:14:28 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 23:15:30 localhost logger: exit standby after 62
 Nov 2 23:26:39 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 23:31:20 localhost logger: exit standby after 281
 Nov 2 23:44:29 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 2 23:45:32 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 2 23:56:40 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 00:01:20 localhost logger: exit standby after 280
 Nov 3 00:14:29 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 00:15:32 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 3 00:26:41 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 00:31:20 localhost logger: exit standby after 279
 Nov 3 00:44:29 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 00:45:31 localhost logger: exit standby after 62
 Nov 3 00:56:40 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 01:01:20 localhost logger: exit standby after 280
 Nov 3 01:14:28 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 01:15:31 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 3 01:26:40 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 01:31:20 localhost logger: exit standby after 280
 Nov 3 01:44:28 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 01:45:31 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 3 01:56:40 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 02:01:20 localhost logger: exit standby after 280
 Nov 3 02:14:29 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 02:15:32 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 3 02:26:41 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 02:31:21 localhost logger: exit standby after 280
 Nov 3 02:44:30 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 02:45:32 localhost logger: exit standby after 62
 Nov 3 02:56:41 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 03:01:21 localhost logger: exit standby after 280
 Nov 3 03:14:30 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 03:15:33 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 3 03:26:41 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 03:31:21 localhost logger: exit standby after 280
 Nov 3 03:44:30 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 03:45:32 localhost logger: exit standby after 62
 Nov 3 03:56:41 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 04:01:22 localhost logger: exit standby after 281
 Nov 3 04:14:30 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 04:15:33 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 3 04:26:42 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 04:31:22 localhost logger: exit standby after 280
 Nov 3 04:44:30 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 04:45:33 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 3 04:56:42 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 05:01:22 localhost logger: exit standby after 280
 Nov 3 05:14:30 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 05:15:33 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 3 05:26:42 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 05:31:22 localhost logger: exit standby after 280
 Nov 3 05:44:31 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 05:45:34 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
 Nov 3 05:56:43 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 06:01:22 localhost logger: exit standby after 279
 Nov 3 06:14:31 localhost logger: Enter standby
 Nov 3 06:15:33 localhost logger: exit standby after 62
 Nov 3 06:35:29 localhost kernel: eth0: link is up, 1000 FDX, pause enabled
 Nov 3 06:35:29 localhost kernel: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready

Remember that the My Book Live is basically a little computer running Linux.  So the kernel will wake up and look around, then go back to sleep.  The PowerPC processor is very efficient and doesn’t use a lot of power, and this is just basically normal.  The drive is doing a lot of other things besides monitoring network traffic.  It’s also monitoring drive and enclosure health, running a web interface, etc.  All OSes do this and it can’t be prevented (otherwise the system would never respond after sleeping!).

It’s the hard drive itself that requires most of the power!  Your My Book Live has a Caviar Green drive for maximum savings in energy, heat, and volume.  The drive will spin down on its own when not in use, and this isn’t reflected in the kernel log you’re looking at.  So you can rest assured that your My Book Live is actually functioning as intended.

Nathan_H

Your reply seems to contradict statements previously made by other WD staff imembers. In the thread “My Book Live Never Sleeps” WD staff have acknowledged that there is a problem with standby and that they are working on it but it is a difficult problem to solve. Your reply seems to imply that WD is now saying that the inability for a MBL to go into standby and stay there is normal. My MBL 3TB goes into standby for 1second every 10 minutes (as determined by listening to the drive spin-down and spin-up) .The Blue standby light comes on for a period of about 61 seconds every 10 minutes and this interval is indicated in the file var/log/user.log. I have never placed any files on the MBL (so it is not transferring or transcoding) and I have disabled Media, ftp and Remote Access as well as browser access to DashBoard. F/W is the latest 02.03.01-024.

My MBL will not sleep! However,  a friends MBL 3TB (bought within a day of mine) will reliably go into standby and stay there for hours/days with no drive activity and with the Blue standby LED continuously on. There is a problem with standy/sleep on many MBLs and I dearly hope that WD has not given up on trying to find a solution to resolve this problem. 

WilliamH,

I’m not a product engineer, and am not involved with the firmware, so I do not know any details except that they are working on the standby issue.  As you can imagine, when a problem like this is fairly uncommon it can be very difficult to track down with certainty.

If you’re seeing the green blinking LED, then the internal drive is actually spinning up and being accessed.  There is an issue where this happens, and it is being investigated, but it would not necessarily be related to the logs.  What I am saying is that the unit’s standby and the drive standby (and attendant blue LED) are not necessarily identical and the unit itself operates independantly of the actual drive, unlike a direct-attached external USB hard drive.

Nathan_H,

Thank you for the reply. I’m glad to hear that the problem is still being worked. It gives me hope that perhaps this difficult problem will be resolved with the next F/W release.

To clarify the LED status of my MBL 3TB: The Green LED is normally on (Flashing occasionally if the Browser is accessing DashBoard or Green steady if the browser is not pointed at the MBL IP. The Blue standby LED and the log (/var/log/user.log) do seem to fairly accurately report the status of the LED. The Blue LED comes on every 10 minutes for a 61 second period. As I mentioned the actualy drive inactivity is quite a bit less than this (1 - 2 seconds between spin-down and spin-up).

Oct 26 00:53:17 localhost logger: Enter standby
Oct 26 00:54:18 localhost logger: exit standby after 61
Oct 26 01:05:27 localhost logger: Enter standby
Oct 26 01:06:28 localhost logger: exit standby after 61

(and so on)

One further point: In addition to never adding any  files to the MBL, I have also never installed any files from the CD - no SmartWare, no drivers, no SES, nothing. I can see the MBL just fine from WinXP SP3 via “My Network Places” without any WD software installed on the computer. Hope some of this information provides some clues to the WD staff that are working the standby/sleep problem.

 Remember that the My Book Live is basically a little computer running Linux.  So the kernel will wake up and look around

Nathan,

Thank you for your answer!

Actually, the drive is spun down by the “monitorio.sh” script, using the ‘hdparm’ utility, not on its own. Then the log file is written (“Enter standby”). So this has nothing to do with system (CPU) standby, it actually is the drive being spun down manually.

After this happens, the kernel is not supposed to wake the drive on its own. There are power saving options (e.g. mount options like ‘noatime’) which prevent exactly this. Even my (Linux based) laptop does not do that (by default). So I would expect the Mybook Live, as a single-purpose device, to be optimized in regard to this. I know there are cronjobs which need to run at certain times, but that should be kept to a minimum. These jobs run once a day (or something) and not every five minutes.

I’m not (primarily) worried about power consumption. I measured the power and it is 4-5W when idle and 10-12W when active, which translates to around 2€ per month max. I’m worried about mechanical wear and heat. After all, the Mybook contains backups of all our computers, and should stay reliable for some years.

Interesting discussion . . .

In monitorio.sh there is a bit that enumerates files.  Photos, videos, audio and other.  Before only the Public share was enumerated. A few firmwares ago the entire /shares is enumerated.

A question to ask is, for the MBLs that keep on waking up or don’t sleep, how many files are on there and of what type as compared to the MBLs which to go to sleep, like mine.  Obviously the algorithm to put the MBL to sleep and wake it up does work because mine does go to sleep and for hours at a time.

So what’s the difference?   Anyone tried to solve that question?

Again my log shows it working, BUT for the first time I’ve noticed something strange.  How can the MBL go into standby twice without coming once out of standby and this has, for me, just happened.

Nov 5 03:05:50 localhost logger: Enter standby
Nov 5 08:59:23 localhost logger: exit standby after 21213
Nov 5 09:20:32 localhost logger: Enter standby
Nov 5 10:21:02 localhost logger: exit standby after 3630
Nov 5 11:37:47 localhost logger: Enter standby
Nov 5 11:38:48 localhost logger: exit standby after 61
Nov 5 12:20:08 localhost logger: Enter standby
Nov 5 14:28:00 localhost logger: exit standby after 7672
Nov 5 14:57:31 localhost logger: Enter standby
Nov 5 14:58:40 localhost logger: exit standby after 69
Nov 5 15:19:54 localhost logger: Enter standby
Nov 5 15:25:18 localhost logger: exit standby after 324
Nov 5 15:36:29 localhost logger: Enter standby
Nov 5 16:00:20 localhost logger: exit standby after 1431
Nov 5 16:20:28 localhost logger: Enter standby
Nov 5 18:27:54 localhost logger: exit standby after 7646
Nov 5 18:38:58 localhost logger: Enter standby
Nov 5 23:34:11 localhost logger: exit standby after 17713
Nov 5 23:45:16 localhost logger: Enter standby
Nov 6 00:21:44 localhost logger: exit standby after 2188
Nov 6 00:37:54 localhost logger: Enter standby
Nov 6 01:23:04 localhost logger: Enter standby
Nov 6 01:24:05 localhost logger: exit standby after 61

This might be a reason. Since I have enabled Twonky (for my TV), the device doesn’t only not go to sleep any more (at all), but it also is never idle.  I have a fairly large amount of files on my share:

MyBookLive:~# find /shares/ | nl | tail -1

284732 /shares/.mediacrawler/mediacrawler-volume.xml

284732 files altogether. After all, this is a 3TB drive.

Using ‘top’ via SSH I can see that almost constantly (I’d say 80% of the time), three to four processes are active and consuming most of the power:

 * ls

 * tally

 * awk

 * twonkymediaserver

Also, “load average” NEVER goes below 2.5 any more.

Since this did not happen when Twonky wasn’t running, is it possible that there is a race between two processes that detect “harddisk activity” and then reindex their respective set of files? Twonky is set to reindex when “watched directories change”. I fear it is actively watching these directories and not using a kernel feature like ‘fam’ to be notified when things change. Is there another process watching for changes on the harddisk? So that they would trigger each other all the time when they write their respecetive indexes?

Hi to All with the Sleep/Standby Problem,

I have resolved the problem that was preventing my MBL 3TB from entering Sleep/Standby. See my posting of today (Tues 06 Dec 2011) in the thread “Huge MBL Operating System File - Could It Be Preventing Sleep?”. Hope that the resolution of my problem will be of use to some members of the WD Community.

Regards, WilliamH