Laptop Hard drive being damaged : Ubuntu

I have read many blogs regarding laptop hard disk being damaged , especially with power management on laptops and unnecessary disk activities. one of them i came across about firefox makes unnecessary hit to hard disk. and i hope this will not happen in windows.

ok lets demo this..

$sudo dmesg -c

opening a new tab and going to a website (two times)

$dmesg | grep firefox

result :

[ 1900.468000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 18829523 (sessionstore-1.js) on dm-2
[ 1900.468000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 18829540 (?) on dm-2
[ 1901.580000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 19927160 (_CACHE_001_) on dm-2
[ 1901.580000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 19927160 (_CACHE_001_) on dm-2
[ 1901.896000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 19927160 (_CACHE_001_) on dm-2
[ 1910.504000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 18829540 (sessionstore-1.js) on dm-2
[ 1911.568000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 18826308 (history.dat) on dm-2
[ 1911.568000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 18826308 (history.dat) on dm-2
[ 1911.568000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 18826308 (history.dat) on dm-2
[ 1920.212000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 18829523 (prefs-1.js) on dm-2
[ 1920.216000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 18827110 (?) on dm-2
[ 1923.632000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 18827110 (localstore-1.rdf) on dm-2
[ 1923.636000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 18829504 (?) on dm-2
[ 1933.100000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 18829504 (sessionstore-1.js) on dm-2
[ 1933.852000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 19927161 (_CACHE_002_) on dm-2
[ 1933.852000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 19927161 (_CACHE_002_) on dm-2
[ 1933.896000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 19927165 (_CACHE_003_) on dm-2
[ 1933.896000] firefox-bin(6521): dirtied inode 19927165 (_CACHE_003_) on dm-2
[ 1934.308000] firefox-bin(6521): READ block 404671336 on dm-2
[ 1934.332000] firefox-bin(6521): READ block 404671432 on dm-2
[ 1934.332000] firefox-bin(6521): READ block 404671880 on dm-2
[ 1934.340000] firefox-bin(6521): READ block 404671368 on dm-2
[ 1934.340000] firefox-bin(6521): READ block 404671376 on dm-2
[ 1934.340000] firefox-bin(6521): READ block 404671384 on dm-2
[ 1934.340000] firefox-bin(6521): READ block 404671392 on dm-2
[ 1934.340000] firefox-bin(6521): READ block 404671400 on dm-2
[ 1934.340000] firefox-bin(6521): READ block 404671408 on dm-2
[ 1934.340000] firefox-bin(6521): READ block 404671416 on dm-2
[ 1934.340000] firefox-bin(6521): READ block 404671424 on dm-2
[ 1934.340000] firefox-bin(6521): READ block 404671440 on dm-2
[ 1934.344000] firefox-bin(6521): READ block 404671680 on dm-2
Each time firefox goes to a new website firefox accesses the disk. IMHO cache/cookies/history/session-stuff all needs to be stored in ram instead of on the disk and should only be stored to the disk once in a while (10 minutes?) and when firefox closes.

firefox might cause unnecessary disk activity. It is important for laptop users to reduce unnecessary disk-activity because the harddrive head might be parked or the drive might be spun down.

This might be one of the contributors to the famous Load_Cycle_Count bug :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/17216
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695

Aggressive power management will cause your laptop’s harddrive head to park quickly. Too much unnecessary disk activity and usefull disk activity such as ext3 journalling (which is safer for your data) will unpark your harddrive head quickly. This combination of aggressive power management and disk activity is causing too rapidly increasing Load_Cycle_Counts for some people.

READ THIS FIRST :
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php…4&postcount=25
http://ubuntudemon.wordpress.com/200…er-management/
http://www.advogato.org/person/mjg59/diary/82.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php…&postcount=381
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php…&postcount=426

And i hope ubuntu team will look after these bugs….

Ubuntu 7.10 rocks !!!

Recently i have installed Ubuntu 7.10(gusty gibbon) its really amazing thing to be there in your system. Well it has numerous features from desktop to taskbar…One thing i can highlight is , it has some cool 3D desktop options , where you can view your desktop in 3D view . And also you can Drag your app’s to next desktop which will give 3D effect kinda thing… wo its really amazing. watch this demo

java.6 —–new I/O API’s for the needy

Free Diskspace:

One can now discover the amount of disk space left in the partition named by
the given file !!! This is a very
handy feature, for example, installers can now determine beforehand
how much diskspace is available on a partition that it’s going to install the stuff on.

Three new methods have been added to java.io.File class:

getFreeSpace()
getUsableSpace()
getTotalSpace()

Using these methods one can do something like:

import java.io.*;
:
:
:
File dir;
System.out.println(“Total MB     Free    Usable”);
System.out.format(” %6d    %6d   %6d\n”,
(dir.getTotalSpace() >> 20),
(dir.getFreeSpace() >> 20),
(dir.getUsableSpace() >> 20));

Changing File Attributes:

In java6 the java.io.File API provides access to the file attributes for changing its readability, ability to write and ability to make it executable. Check out the following methods for playing around with file attributes:

Changing readability:                            owner-only, owner or everybody
Making it writable or read-only:              owner-only, owner or everybody
Making it executable or not executable: owner-only, owner or everybody

WinTabber , for messy windows

WinTabber is very useful software for the one who is using windows OS. coz this tool create tabs for any software you are running, but you can choose specifically which programs are grouped together.This means you can have one instance of WinTabber with your blogging, writing and research material, while another has all your graphic editing stuff. WinTabber is particularly useful to those who find XP’s taskbar grouping unbearable.

I use this for command prompt window … now after using this software i can tab multiple CMD’s in one single window !!! ….

just like this…

Before

AFTER

This software tabs for all softwares running on windows , its not only for CMD’s

download http://www.tabtastic.com/install/WinTabber_setup.exe

More info http://wintabber.com/

Gmail Hack: Send Yourself Bookmarklet

If you ever wanted to send yourself a quick note or ToDo without opening up Gmail, What’s The Next Action have an easy hack to put a bookmarklet that does so in your browser.

1. Click on “compose” in Gmail, and then click on the pop-out button in the compose area to bring it to a new window;
2. Right-click on some blue space and select “Bookmark This Page” and save it in your Bookmarks Toolbar folder;
3. Right-click on the new bookmarklet you’ve created, select Properties and check “Load this bookmark in the sidebar”. Now just click on this bookmarklet at any time when you want to send yourself a new task, or send someone else a quick email.

Hacking Firefox

Here i will teach you how to tweek your smart firefox. Hacking firefox is just not so complicated , just you need to do some config stuff….. what if your firefox just want to do boost your browsing speed ? your firefox uses % of RAM make it slow down startup ? you got many reasons to annoy this baby …..

well , fasten up… here are some of the hacks

1)Create a user.js file. Another way to customize Firefox, creating a user.js file can really speed up your browsing. You’ll need to create a text file named user.js in your profile folder (see this to find out where the profile folder is) and see this example user.js file that you can modify. Created by techlifeweb.com, this example explains some of the things you can do in its comments.

2) about:config. The true power user’s tool, about.config isn’t something to mess with if you don’t know what a setting does. You can get to the main configuration screen by putting about:config in the browser’s address bar. See Mozillazine’s about:config tips and screenshots.

3)Speed up Firefox. If you have a broadband connection (and most of us do), you can use pipelining to speed up your page loads. This allows Firefox to load multiple things on a page at once, instead of one at a time (by default, it’s optimized for dialup connections). Here’s how:

• Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Type “network.http” in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
• Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
• Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
• Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a number like 30. This will allow it to make 30 requests at once.
• Also, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

4)Limit RAM usage. If Firefox takes up too much memory on your computer, you can limit the amount of RAM it is allowed to us. Again, go to about:config, filter “browser.cache” and select “browser.cache.disk.capacity”. It’s set to 50000, but you can lower it, depending on how much memory you have. Try 15000 if you have between 512MB and 1GB ram.