Pro Pioneer - Spin Down working or not ?

Damn right !

Millions of CRON related entries in auth.log

I'm pouring 4TB of stuff back in Pro #2 at the moment so I can't test Pro #1.
When that's finished and all is quiet, I'll test again.

CRON is a timer related activity as I remember from Ubuntu Linux.
What is it supposed to be doing as I have set no timers except : SpinDown and ShutDown/WakeUp

However I have entries for SpinDown that overlap with these CRON entries, so they might not be the cause :

viz :

Oct 30 01:12:39 Pippin noflushd[1877]: Spinning down disks.
Oct 30 02:05:14 Pippin noflushd[1877]: Disks spinning up after 52 minutes.
Oct 30 03:07:15 Pippin noflushd[1877]: Spinning down disks.
Oct 30 05:04:30 Pippin noflushd[1877]: Disks spinning up after 117 minutes.

and

Oct 30 01:17:01 Pippin CRON[17014]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 01:17:01 Pippin CRON[17014]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root
Oct 30 01:23:01 Pippin CRON[17110]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 01:38:01 Pippin CRON[17373]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 01:38:01 Pippin CRON[17373]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root
Oct 30 01:53:01 Pippin CRON[17628]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 01:53:01 Pippin CRON[17628]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root
Oct 30 02:05:01 Pippin CRON[17833]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 02:05:30 Pippin sudo: root : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/root ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/sbin/mdconfig -t
Oct 30 02:05:30 Pippin CRON[17833]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root

Oct 30 03:08:01 Pippin CRON[18806]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 03:17:01 Pippin CRON[18955]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 03:17:01 Pippin CRON[18955]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root
Oct 30 03:23:01 Pippin CRON[19058]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 03:23:01 Pippin CRON[19058]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root
Oct 30 03:38:01 Pippin CRON[19311]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 03:38:01 Pippin CRON[19311]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root
Oct 30 03:53:01 Pippin CRON[19572]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 03:53:01 Pippin CRON[19572]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root
Oct 30 04:00:01 Pippin CRON[19686]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 04:00:01 Pippin CRON[19685]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 04:08:01 Pippin CRON[19832]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 04:08:01 Pippin CRON[19832]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root
Oct 30 04:17:01 Pippin CRON[19991]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 04:17:01 Pippin CRON[19991]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root
Oct 30 04:23:01 Pippin CRON[20094]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 04:23:01 Pippin CRON[20094]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root
Oct 30 04:38:01 Pippin CRON[20357]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 04:38:01 Pippin CRON[20357]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root
Oct 30 04:53:01 Pippin CRON[20610]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 04:53:01 Pippin CRON[20610]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root
Oct 30 05:08:01 Pippin CRON[20865]: (pam_unix) session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 30 05:08:01 Pippin CRON[20865]: (pam_unix) session closed for user root