[Kel_Sceptic]

Hello guys,

So I setup this fanless HDPlex H5 HTPC with an M2.SSD for the XUbuntu OS and a raid1 with 2x WD Green EARS 2TB HDDs.
It's a dualhead system, on VT7 I'm running only Kodi and it's the focus VT when the system boots up. On VT10 I have an XFCE for needy times.
I've set up hdparm to put the HDDs to sleep after 20minutes of inactivity. And this happens if I boot the system up and wait for 20minutes without using the media on the raid. But if I wake up the HDDs from watching a movie, the HDDs are not going to sleep ever since that point, and they start to "grind" just like they sound when you are copying huge amounts of data. And they are not stoping regardless of how many hours of inactivity I wait.
I've checked with iotop, dstat, mdadm -D, and there is NO ACTIVITY, no READ, no WRITE, but the hdds keep on "grinding" randomly. But there's more, if I issue a "hdparm -Y /dev/sda" and "hdparm -Y /dev/sdb", the HDDs are going to sleep and they stay that way, and the grinding dissapears.

So, this just happens in kodi. If I boot the system up and switch to XFCE, access the HDDs, see media, then stop any activity, then the HDDs are going to sleep after 20mins of inactivity. So this points me to kodi.

I'm looking for ways to debug this issue. I know it's not OK for some ppl to put software mdadm raid HDDs to sleep, but that's not the point of the issue.

Any help is apreciated. Thank you.

[graysky]

When you mentioned iotop was it `iotop -Pao`? What does smartctl stay? Run a long test.

[Kel_Sceptic]

When you mentioned iotop was it `iotop -Pao`? What does smartctl stay? Run a long test.

So I've done extensive tests, and I can say it is not XFCE's fault and is not Kodi's fault, but it is LINUX's fault.

I've freshbooted, waited ~20minutes for the raid to spindown, then I've logged in XFCE, opened the raid partition, played a random movie with the default player or 1minute then I've closed all windows. The hdds was UP all night.



This morning I've freshbooted, waited ~20minutes for the raid to spindown, then I've stayed in Kodi, played one random movie for 1 minute and then stoped and went in home menu. The hdds are UP and the grinding keeps on going.
12_18_2016_11:47:57
standby
standby
12_18_2016_11:57:57
active/idle
active/idle
12_18_2016_12:07:57
active/idle
active/idle
12_18_2016_12:17:57
active/idle
active/idle


smartctl -a on both /dev/sda and /dev/sdb shows no active tests running Self-test execution status: ( 0).

iotop -Pao only shows this http://pastebin.com/iSnpgWwF after 30minutes of monitoring.

Dunno why the hdds are grinding

One thing is for sure, I also got an USB external 2TB seagate, and when my raid HDDs stay awake, so is the USB hdd.

[graysky]

Not sure... you mentioned using ubuntu? Try their forums.

[Kel_Sceptic]

I think it is done. After 2 days of really painfull trial and error tests, I've finaly got to a point where HDDs are quitet, not grinding often even when I copy a 12GB movie from them by samba.
The resolution: I've uninstalled udisks. Now the HDDs are quiet like 10seconds after I stop a movie playback eithere from VT7 Kodi, or VT10 Xfce4 and it doesn't matter if I leave xfce logged with consoles or browsers running.
Now the system works as intended.

Thank you for your support.