How To Install idle3-tools on Ubuntu 18.04
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install idle3-tools on Ubuntu 18.04.
What is idle3-tools
idle3-tools is:
Idle3-tools provides a linux/unix utility that can disable, get and set the value of the infamous idle3 timer found on recent Western Digital Hard Disk Drives.
It can be used as an alternative to the official wdidle3.exe proprietary utility, without the need to reboot in a DOS environment.
A power off/on cycle of the drive will still be mandatory for new settings to be taken into account.
Modern Western Digital “Green” Drives include the Intellipark feature that stops the disk when not in use.
Unfortunately, the default timer setting is not perfect on linux/unix systems, including many NAS, and leads to a dramatic increase of the Load Cycle Count value (SMART attribute #193). With the default timer setting, the drive will spin down every eight seconds if idle and this may get the spindle motor to burn out in a few months or so.
If you have a Western Digital EADS or EARS drive, please check you SMART information before it’s too late by running the following command:
sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep “^193”
If the Load cycle count (which is in the last column) exceeds 1000, you’re probably affected by the idle3 timer problem.
There are three methods to install idle3-tools on Ubuntu 18.04. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install idle3-tools Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install idle3-tools using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install idle3-tools
Install idle3-tools Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install idle3-tools using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install idle3-tools
Install idle3-tools Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install idle3-tools using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install idle3-tools
How To Uninstall idle3-tools on Ubuntu 18.04
To uninstall only the idle3-tools package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove idle3-tools
Uninstall idle3-tools And Its Dependencies
To uninstall idle3-tools and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 18.04, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove idle3-tools
Remove idle3-tools Configurations and Data
To remove idle3-tools configuration and data from Ubuntu 18.04 we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge idle3-tools
Remove idle3-tools configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove idle3-tools configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge idle3-tools
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install idle3-tools package on Ubuntu 18.04 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.
