Arch Linux

Zolas

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2009-03-16

Posts: 61

Slightly annoying hd-problem

Every two-three seconds my harddrive seems to be accessed (written to or from?) although the system is quite idle. It is just a few "clicks" so it's no major operation that is being performed when its accessed; it is, however, slightly annoying to listen to especially since I have no idea why it's happening. I should mention that my system (running on an Asus Eee 1001px) is quite light so no major processes should running in the back. Any ideas?

pankajmore

Member

Registered: 2010-07-06

Posts: 23

Re: Slightly annoying hd-problem

try running iotop to catch which process is the culprit

graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,597

Website

Re: Slightly annoying hd-problem

+1 for iotop:

$ iotop -Poa

Then right or left arrow to sort by disk reads or disk writes.

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Zolas

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2009-03-16

Posts: 61

Re: Slightly annoying hd-problem

Thanks for your replies. It appears to be kjournald. Do you know if this can be set so as to not access the disk every other second?

skunktrader

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2010-02-14

Posts: 1,543

Re: Slightly annoying hd-problem

Thanks for your replies. It appears to be kjournald. Do you know if this can be set so as to not access the disk every other second?

Depends on your filesystem and what options you used when you mounted the disk

Zolas

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2009-03-16

Posts: 61

Re: Slightly annoying hd-problem

Well, here's my /etc/fstab:

 # 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system>        <dir>         <type>    <options>          <dump> <pass>
devpts                 /dev/pts      devpts    defaults            0      0
shm                    /dev/shm      tmpfs     nodev,nosuid        0      0

#/dev/cdrom             /media/cd   auto    ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
#/dev/dvd               /media/dvd  auto    ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
#/dev/fd0               /media/fl   auto    user,noauto             0      0

UUID=043a9c8e-4f08-4ad3-bf97-edd298df6dd8 swap swap defaults 0 0
UUID=6f6d3ce0-3ada-4a0c-8ba5-17217cd5b062 /home ext3 defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=bc1f6fe6-211d-40b8-9ee9-e4d4a8aacc24 / ext3 defaults,noatime 0 1 

Any ideas?

xamaco

Member

From: Corsica, France

Registered: 2010-04-05

Posts: 87

Re: Slightly annoying hd-problem

If you have hal running, it's probably coming from there...

Zolas

Member

From: Denmark

Registered: 2009-03-16

Posts: 61

Re: Slightly annoying hd-problem

If you have hal running, it's probably coming from there...

Thanks for the input, xamaco. No, hal is not running. It does indeed seem to be kjournald which writes to the hd about every other second. However, it's mostly when another app such as Firefox is running that kjournald is extremely active although no particular activity is going on in, for instance, Firefox. Is this "normal" behaviour on kjournald's behalf or is there a setting which I could tweak to avoid this or, at least, minimize this constant writing to disk?

Cheers!

EDIT: The "problem" persists even when just logging into a console and not running X or any other app.

Last edited by Zolas (2010-12-08 11:43:09)