ext3: kjournald and spun-down disks

[Oliver Xymoron]

My laptop drive seems to be waking up more often today and I suspect it's
somehow ext3/kjournald that's to blame. Does it obey the timings in
/proc/sys/vm/bdflush or does it have its own flush timer?

There's a more general problem with VM on laptops which is that the system
doesn't have any notion of spun-down disks. Flush intervals should be
short when the disk is running and long when it isn't and decisions about
which pages to discard or swap might be improvable. Pre-emptive swap when
the disk is spun down is a loss..

--
 "Love the dolphins," she advised him. "Write by W.A.S.T.E.."