From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263486AbTJ0TZ3 (ORCPT ); Mon, 27 Oct 2003 14:25:29 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263494AbTJ0TZ3 (ORCPT ); Mon, 27 Oct 2003 14:25:29 -0500 Received: from ip3e83a512.speed.planet.nl ([62.131.165.18]:4648 "EHLO made0120.speed.planet.nl") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263486AbTJ0TZW (ORCPT ); Mon, 27 Oct 2003 14:25:22 -0500 Message-ID: <3F9D7120.1020207@planet.nl> Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:25:20 +0100 From: Stef van der Made User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6a) Gecko/20031025 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Heavy disk activity without apperant reason (added more info) References: <3F9BC429.6060608@planet.nl> <3F9D0BBB.9080600@aitel.hist.no> In-Reply-To: <3F9D0BBB.9080600@aitel.hist.no> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: unlisted-recipients:; (no To-header on input) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Dear Helge, I had the very interesting disk activity again. No serious activity was happening. I've tried to make some sense of the 2 output commands you've asked, but they make not much sense. Sorry :-( that I need to ask so much help on this (bug) report. This is the output of vmstat procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 1 0 0 122124 37396 238892 0 0 0 100 1073 1246 98 2 0 0 1 0 0 121996 37396 239020 0 0 128 0 1079 1068 100 0 0 0 1 0 0 121988 37396 239020 0 0 0 0 1109 1266 99 1 0 0 1 0 0 121860 37396 239020 0 0 0 0 1124 1393 97 3 0 0 1 0 0 121924 37396 239020 0 0 0 0 1143 1220 98 2 0 0 2 0 0 121924 37416 239020 0 0 0 32 1081 1154 99 1 0 0 2 0 0 121924 37416 239020 0 0 0 0 1061 1096 99 1 0 0 1 0 0 121796 37448 239148 0 0 128 36 1063 1104 99 1 0 0 1 0 0 121732 37448 239152 0 0 0 0 1147 1471 98 2 0 0 2 0 0 121732 37448 239152 0 0 0 0 1118 1330 99 1 0 0 1 2 0 121212 37484 239160 0 0 0 180 1264 1631 96 4 0 0 1 1 0 121148 37484 239160 0 0 0 158 1305 1540 95 5 0 0 1 1 0 121148 37484 239164 0 0 0 166 1300 1678 95 5 0 0 1 1 0 121148 37484 239172 0 0 0 199 1315 6863 93 7 0 0 1 2 0 121020 37484 239316 0 0 128 217 1303 2197 94 6 0 0 1 2 0 121020 37500 239320 0 0 0 213 1300 7326 91 9 0 0 1 1 0 120956 37500 239328 0 0 0 225 1352 1842 93 7 0 0 3 1 0 120948 37500 239336 0 0 0 219 1346 1656 94 6 0 0 1 1 0 120772 37500 239348 0 0 0 228 1351 1678 94 6 0 0 2 1 0 120948 37500 239356 0 0 0 198 1252 1476 96 4 0 0 1 0 0 121204 37500 239484 0 0 128 40 1122 1162 98 2 0 0 and this is top top - 20:17:06 up 1:15, 1 user, load average: 1.63, 1.26, 1.19 Tasks: 77 total, 3 running, 74 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 4.0% us, 2.0% sy, 93.1% ni, 0.0% id, 0.0% wa, 1.0% hi, 0.0% si Mem: 515692k total, 394488k used, 121204k free, 37500k buffers Swap: 136512k total, 0k used, 136512k free, 239484k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 118 root 39 19 1120 584 1072 R 94.4 0.1 68:55.07 dnetc 225 root 16 0 73620 20m 54m R 1.0 4.2 1:15.36 X 263 stef 15 0 21116 6720 7412 S 1.0 1.3 0:05.12 xmms 303 stef 15 0 22948 14m 14m S 1.0 3.0 0:14.47 gnome-terminal 318 stef 15 0 66528 49m 26m S 1.0 9.9 3:56.12 mozilla-bin 667 stef 16 0 1912 1028 1756 R 1.0 0.2 0:09.34 top 1 root 16 0 420 216 388 S 0.0 0.0 0:06.29 init 2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0 3 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 events/0 4 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kblockd/0 5 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 kapmd 6 root 25 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush 7 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.28 pdflush 8 root 25 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kswapd0 9 root 10 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0 10 root 21 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0 11 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ahc_dv_0 Best regards, Stef Helge Hafting wrote: > Stef van der Made wrote: > >> >> On my AMD athlon system with 512MB memory I sometimes get a lot of >> disk activity the activity normaly lasts for about 10 seconds and >> after that the disk stays relativily quiet as expected with the load >> on the system. When I look into top I don't see any programs that >> could explain the disk activity. The system is in most cases not >> using any swap. >> > Try finding out what is causing this. > Have a "vmstat 1" running. Break it after this > disk activity starts. You should be able to > see wether it is normal io or swap. > > Also have a "top -d 1" running. A normal > process issuing lots of io will probably > show up here too. "ps aux" during > the activity might also be a good idea. > > Note that such behaviour isn't necessarily unusual. > Perhaps cron started something that needed lots > of reads to start? Perhaps you got a bunch of emails? > Email software often use synchronous writes, so they won't > loose any of your mail even in case of a crash. > This synchronous io makes for _lots_ of disk seeking. > Email filters (for spam and other purposes) may make this even worse, > with email messages being written synchronously several times. > If you use "fetchmail" started by cron - see if these disk bursts > correspond with mail fetching. > > Helge Hafting > >