#751 lxpanel wakes up external green drives

[Ralf Mardorf]

Hi,

this bug is a known issue for e.g. gvfs, but I experienced it for the
very first time caused by a panel.

To reproduce the bug start an Openbox session with fbpanel.
Note the output of smartctl -a /dev/WD_Caviar_Green.
After 2 hours compare it with a new smartctl -a /dev/WD_Caviar_Green
output. As wanted, the external green drive didn't spin up.
Then launch lxpanel. After 2 hours run
smartctl -a /dev/WD_Caviar_Green again. The output now shows that
lxpanel without a valid reason did wake up the external green drive
several times.

It's a sane EU Regulation that external drives will spin down and it's
an odd Linux behaviour that some software is known to make those drives
spin up without a valid reason.

One culprit is GVFS, there also is a KDE thingy doing this and now I
noticed that lxpanel does cause this issue too. Even people who want
to mount external drives by mouse could do it using tools as e.g.
roden, without wasting of energy and killing external drives. However,
I'm using several panels and lxpanel is the only panel waking up green
drives.

[rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ pacman -Qi lxpanel | head -n4 | grep -v D
Name : lxpanel
Version : 0.8.0-1
Architecture : x86_64

Regards,
Ralf

[Lonely Stranger]

Thank you very much for the report. The lxpanel uses LibFM/GLib/GIO functions to run applications (in menu and launcher plugins) and access folders (in directory menu plugin). It is not efficient to reimplement all those functions in the panel itself with rich support such as applications/menu editing, that's the reason why LibFM/GLib/GIO is used, and GIO uses GVFS if it was found, so I believe that is GVFS to blame. The workaround on that issue should be a way to tell GIO don't use GVFS. I would like to ask you to do a little testing whether that's possible don't use GFVS even if it's installed. It's simple, just set environment GIO_USE_VFS=local when starting lxpanel, starting it like that:

 GIO_USE_VFS=local lxpanel

Could you do it, please? Thank you in advance.

[Ralf Mardorf]

Hi,

I already removed lxpanel and dependencies, but I'm willing to install it again. However, GVFS isn't the culprit, since it's not installed. An empty package fakes to provide it for software that claims to need it as a hard dependency. Since I don't need a trash bin and mount by CLI, non of the tested software ever failed.

[rocketmouse@archlinux ~]$ pacman -Qi gvfs
Name : gvfs
Version : 2013.08.18-1
Description : Dummy package
Architecture : any
URL : None
Licenses : None
Groups : None
Provides : gvfs
Depends On : None
Optional Deps : None
Required By : caja libgnome nemo
Optional For : evince ffmpegthumbnailer thunar
Conflicts With : dummy
Replaces : None
Installed Size : 4.00 KiB
Packager : Unknown Packager
Build Date : Sun 18 Aug 2013 06:06:40 PM CEST
Install Date : Fri 06 Sep 2013 12:34:40 PM CEST
Install Reason : Explicitly installed
Install Script : No
Validated By : None

Regards,
Ralf

[Lonely Stranger]

If you don't have GVFS installed then it's very strange, even suspicious, I really have no idea what may wake up drives, everything lxpanel does in the filesystem is done via LibFM which in its turn uses GIO for that, and I thought GIO would not do that without GVFS but apparently it does. Although I still would like you to test that workaround with GIO_USE_VFS=local, if you can do it, please. That may still help. If that helps then I enforce that setting in the lxpanel code. And if that would not then I would ask you to remove all plugins from panel and check again if wake ups happen, and if that weirdness stopped then only way to find bugged one is to add plugins one by one until weird one is detected. I understand that is a lot of trouble for you but bear with me, please, nobody else can help I'm afraid. Thank you very much.

[Ralf Mardorf]

Hi,

a panel without applets launched by 'GIO_USE_VFS=local lxpanel' still
wakes up the hard disk.

Regards,
Ralf

[Lonely Stranger]

Could you test if older lxpanel (older than version 0.7.0) had the behavior or not, please? Since version 0.7.0 it uses LibFM (the same as PCManFM uses) and it might be a culprit. Thank you very much.

[Ralf Mardorf]

lxpanel 0.6.2 does not wake up the green drive.

[Lonely Stranger]

Thank you very much for your help. I'm sorry that I have to bother you again but I'm afraid nobody else can help. Could you try to rebuild the libfm package from GIT sources so replace one used by lxpanel, please? I suspect the GVolumeMonitor is a culprit so I've disabled its usage by libfm when not in a file manager. I really hope that may fix this issue. Thank you in advance.

[Ralf Mardorf]

Thank you,

libfm commit 994a1e2 fixed the issue.
The green drive no longer is woken up by lxpanel.

$ pacman -Q lxpanel libfm-gtk-git
lxpanel 0.8.0-1
libfm-gtk-git 1.2.3.31.g994a1e2-1

Regards,
Ralf