SD card unpartitioned space -- used for swap?

[Richard A. Smith]

On 11/22/2010 07:20 PM, James Cameron wrote:

>> Also, I'm not familiar with "evil keepout time".  But note that on the
>> new XO-1 F14 build, the "shutdown" time-lapse is only a few seconds.
>> If actually 30s are needed to keep the SD circuitry happy, perhaps a
>> delay (and a Release Notes explanation) should be added to the OLPC.
>
> I suspect the "evil keepout time" is the time after the last write
> request to the card and the removal of power.  It is why current XO-1.5
> EC firmware blinks the power LED for some seconds on power off.

Its 3 seconds and only active for internal uSD.  You need really new 1.5 
firmware to have this delay.

If you are running on external SD there is at least one 8 gig card with 
a flash controller (which could be in multiple different cards) that 
will become completely unusable if you power it off less than 2 seconds 
or so from the last write.  I recommend you do hard power offs little as 
possible.  Suspend/resume also should be disabled.

-- 
Richard A. Smith  <richard at laptop.org>
One Laptop per Child