DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

vishnumrao · 2010-08-10 02:41:23

Is there a script to make the DNS-323 go into a scheduled sleep or hibernate or shutdown and then power back up at a scheduled time.

Here is the idea: The NAS goes into a hibernate or sleep mode (not just disks spinning down but a full system sleep) at some time of users choice and then turns back ON at another user set time.

Here is the reason why I ask for this feature (I am sure many other might be in the same situation). My NAS sits in my bedroom. When I have torrents running on the NAS, the disks don't spin down. Thus, when I am sleeping, I can hear the occasional drive read/write happening and the fan running. Currently to avoid this noise, I have to manually turn OFF the NAS at night and then turn ON the NAS in the morning. If the system had a feature where the system goes into sleep, it would turn off the NAS without user intervention and then turn ON the NAS at the scheduled wake up time.

Last edited by vishnumrao (2010-08-10 02:45:30)

scaramanga · 2010-08-10 11:08:02

I know it's not what you asked for, but if it's the torrenting that causes it, you can schedule cron jobs to stop/start Transmission at pre-set times.

devotee · 2010-08-10 12:50:51

scaramanga wrote:
I know it's not what you asked for, but if it's the torrenting that causes it, you can schedule cron jobs to stop/start Transmission at pre-set times.

That's the only solution because, AFAIR, there's no way to automatically power on the DNS-323. There might be a hardware hack, but you can't wake it up natively (either at a given time, or using Wake-On-Lan -I remember there's a hardware hack for WOL, though-).

Some time ago I had an Asus P5A (or P5B, I'm not sure) motherboard that wouldn't turn on after a power loss. The solution I found searching the net was to short the power on button's pins of the motherboard with a resistor and a capacitor. When the power came back in, it briefly charged the capacitor, then it discharged, turning the motherboard on (shorting the pins directly wouldn't work). I guess a similar approach could be used on the DNS-323, using a plug in timer to switch it on and off at given times (however you should always shutdown the DNS-323 cleanly using a cron job). For example:

1. Turn off the DNS-323 via cron job at a given time (23:00)
2. Turn the plug power off using a plug in timer a bit later (23:10) to ensure shutdown is complete.
3. Turn the plug power on using the plug in timer at a given time (08:00)
4. Hack the DNS-323 power on button so it always turns on the unit

But, again, scheduling the bittorrent client start/stop times via cron jobs it the simplest approach. Keep in mind that one of the drives (the one where ffp is installed in) might never go to sleep, or might wake up regularly, as it is always being used.

Last edited by devotee (2010-08-10 12:55:34)

Mijzelf · 2010-08-10 13:48:14

The DNS-323 has an RTC (according to the battery on the PCB photos), so maybe this hack is capable of switching on the NAS on a certain time.

scaramanga · 2010-08-10 16:05:06

There are some previous discussions on this forum regarding WOL (Wake On LAN) which can be used to do what vishnumrao want but it seems like it'll require some HW hacking.
Maybe it's doable on Rev. C1 HW without any HW hacking (b/c power-out recovery is supported)?

Anyway, I just tried stopping Transmission, and indeed both HD were parked after a while (Power Led got dimmed).

Last edited by scaramanga (2010-08-10 16:05:44)

RoganDawes · 2010-08-11 00:32:06

scaramanga wrote:
There are some previous discussions on this forum regarding WOL (Wake On LAN) which can be used to do what vishnumrao want but it seems like it'll require some HW hacking.
Maybe it's doable on Rev. C1 HW without any HW hacking (b/c power-out recovery is supported)?

Anyway, I just tried stopping Transmission, and indeed both HD were parked after a while (Power Led got dimmed).

There is discussion about implementing WOL in the boot loader, although that is not quite imminent just yet.

The trick would be to set a flag in the NVRAM/flash that the boot loader would read, to initialise the SoC and the ethernet port, then put everything into a low power state until a suitable WoL packet is received (or alternatively, until a timer expires). Once the userspace code has set the flag, it would initiate a reboot

While it would not be quite as low as the pure RTC clock solution, it might do for this purpose.

vishnumrao · 2010-08-11 01:47:15

Thank you all the replies.

Hardware hacks are beyond me at this point of time. CRON jobs, hmm, I don't know if I have the required linux coding skills to accomplish that.

Desktop Linux version of Transmission has a built in scheduling of torrent downloads. I guess that feature should be available on the web gui based Transmission. Will scheduling Transmission to stop downloads help? I mean will be hare drives spin down if the downloads are stopped?

I believe putting the NAS into a sleep mode or low power mode is very important. Even with the drives spun down, my NAS box still consumes about 11-12 W which is high for an idle state.

Question: do other NAS boxes provide a sleep or low power mode?

Mijzelf · 2010-08-11 13:05:11

vishnumrao wrote:
Question: do other NAS boxes provide a sleep or low power mode?

Yes. The ZyXEL NSA-220 plus and it's successor NSA-221 both can switch their selfs off and on at timebase. And I suppose more NASses are capable for this.

DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

Announcement

#1 2010-08-10 02:41:23

Scheduled sleep and scheduled wake up

#2 2010-08-10 11:08:02

Re: Scheduled sleep and scheduled wake up

#3 2010-08-10 12:50:51

Re: Scheduled sleep and scheduled wake up

scaramanga wrote:

#4 2010-08-10 13:48:14

Re: Scheduled sleep and scheduled wake up

#5 2010-08-10 16:05:06

Re: Scheduled sleep and scheduled wake up

#6 2010-08-11 00:32:06

Re: Scheduled sleep and scheduled wake up

scaramanga wrote:

#7 2010-08-11 01:47:15

Re: Scheduled sleep and scheduled wake up

#8 2010-08-11 13:05:11

Re: Scheduled sleep and scheduled wake up

vishnumrao wrote:

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