HDAPS

HDAPS - IBM Active Protection System Linux Driver This is the Linux driver for monitoring the acceleratometer known as IBM Active Protection System. The driver only enables reading of the acceleration data. It does not perform automatic disk head parking. But there are already some other useful applications for HDAPS, using the /sys interface it provides.

Features

• provides accelerometer values via sysfs
• provides a joystick type input device

Project Homepage / Availability

• Project Homepage
• The driver is included in the 2.6-mm series of kernels since August, 26th 2005.
• The driver is now in the mainline (2.6.14).

Status

A driver is included in recent Linux kernels and is actively maintained.

Harddisk Protection

As mentioned above, the hdaps kernel driver is only responsible for reading the accelerometer data and exporting it through the sysfs interface. In order to use this information to protect the disk, some additional steps are required.

See How to protect the harddisk through APS.

Input device support

It seems ([1], [2]) that (with kernels from 2.6.14?) the hdaps driver also exports a joystick type input device. (This hasn't been verifyed so far.)

Applications

Security & Safety

• disk park patch an experimental patch for parking the disk (Linux 2.6.14 for 2.6.15 see below)
• disk park patch adapted for the t41p model kernel 2.6.14 (capability detection disabled, no libata support)
• disk park patch adapted for the t41p model kernel 2.6.15 (capability detection disabled, no libata support)
• Latest sata/ide disk protection patch for 2.6.15
• Latest userspace parking daemon
• Script for theft alarm using HDAPS

Monitoring

• gkhdaps a GKrellM applet displaying tilt data
• gnome-tilt a gnome applet showing tilt data
• khdapsmon KDE System Tray app similar to the Windows one (also at kde-apps.org)
• gnome-hdaps-applet visual display of disk protection status in gnome panel

Visualisation (of ThinkPad orientation)

• hdaps-gl a little app animating a 3D-ThinkPad
• hdapsgl-applet a GNOME applet animating a 3D-ThinkPad
• wmadhps a WindowMaker DockApp animating a 3D-ThinkPad
• OpenGL gyroscope hack keeps your display levelled when tilting the ThinkPad

Games

• Robert Love mentions a Neverball patch on his blog. However, the link there seems broken.

Interesting links related to this project

• HDAPS mailinglist and its archive
• #hdaps channel on irc.freenode.org
• hdaps projects overview of userspace programs using hdaps
• IBM ThinkPads hardware drive firmware site
• http://www.paul.sladen.org/thinkpad-r31/accelerometer/
• http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=100167 Gentoo ebuild for hdaps driver and daemon including a initscript