How To Install hd-idle on Kali Linux
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install hd-idle on Kali Linux.
What is hd-idle
hd-idle is:
hd-idle is a utility program for spinning-down external disks after a period of idle time. Since most external IDE disk enclosures don’t support setting the IDE idle timer, a program like hd-idle is required to spin down idle disks automatically.
A word of caution: hard disks don’t like spinning up too often. Laptop disks are more robust in this respect than desktop disks but if you set your disks to spin down after a few seconds you may damage the disk over time due to the stress the spin-up causes on the spindle motor and bearings. It seems that manufacturers recommend a minimum idle time of 3-5 minutes, the default in hd-idle is 10 minutes.
One more word of caution: hd-idle will spin down any disk accessible via the SCSI layer (USB, IEEE1394, …) but it will not work with real SCSI disks because they don’t spin up automatically. Thus it’s not called scsi-idle and It is not recommended to use it on a real SCSI system unless you have a kernel patch that automatically starts the SCSI disks after receiving a sense buffer indicating the disk has been stopped. Without such a patch, real SCSI disks won’t start again and you can as well pull the plug.
There are three methods to install hd-idle on Kali Linux. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install hd-idle Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get updateAfter updating apt database, We can install hd-idle using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install hd-idleInstall hd-idle Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt updateAfter updating apt database, We can install hd-idle using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install hd-idleInstall hd-idle Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude on Kali Linux first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Kali Linux. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude updateAfter updating apt database, We can install hd-idle using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install hd-idleHow To Uninstall hd-idle on Kali Linux
To uninstall only the hd-idle package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove hd-idleUninstall hd-idle And Its Dependencies
To uninstall hd-idle and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Kali Linux, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove hd-idleRemove hd-idle Configurations and Data
To remove hd-idle configuration and data from Kali Linux we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge hd-idleRemove hd-idle configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove hd-idle configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge hd-idleDependencies
hd-idle have the following dependencies:
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install hd-idle package on Kali Linux using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.
