[SOLVED] Hangs and pauses when accessing HDD

aaeilm · 2017-01-12 22:29:30

hi there!
so,
ive had a lot of trouble with my acer aspire e5 553g haha
but I'm getting there, its turning out alright enough haha
um so

there are randomly 3-4 second pauses when doing a certain class of things from the terminal
i.e
ls will sometimes take a few seconds,
ranger file preview will take a few seconds
vim saving will take a few seconds
sometimes the terminal will miss keyboard input or the output will freeze for a bit

its kindof annoying ahaha.
it happens when accessing the ntfs HDD partition and the ext4 SSD partition(where arch is installed)
it only happens sometimes, and is hard to reproduce, but is very noticlbe when it does happen

i dont know if its a kernel thing or perhaps and issue with urxvt (doesnt seem so but idk)
I'd like to use the lts kernel but im stuck on the mainstream kernel for now until amdgpu works better/linux-lts is updated

~ thanks for any help ~

Last edited by aaeilm (2017-01-17 17:42:54)

ewaller · 2017-01-12 23:42:46

Your shift key is broken.

Are there any mentions of I/O errors in your journal?
What is the output of free -h when you are having troubles?
Is your hostname set correctly?

aaeilm · 2017-01-13 01:43:34

...Anyway
Nothing to note really with journalctl or dmesg.
there is this in dmesg :

[   65.317342] usb 3-1.3: reset full-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-pci
[   65.374988] ata3: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   65.534004] ata2: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[   65.535059] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133
[   67.514110] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[   67.545952] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100

but it is only showing once, while the problem has happened maybe 3 or 4 times this session. (Don't know if this is related to the physical drives at all to be honest)

I'm trying to run free -h in the middle of one of the pauses but it's hard to catch haha.
free -h output normally is :

              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           7.3G        888M        5.9G         40M        488M        6.1G
Swap:            0B          0B          0B

Hostname is set in /etc/hostname and set in /etc/hosts also

Last edited by aaeilm (2017-01-13 01:45:34)

ewaller · 2017-01-13 02:30:25

Thank you. That is much more pleasant to read. I guess I'm an old fart
That all looks pretty good. It is not a matter of thrashing -- you have plenty of free memory and are not mired in swapping. Is this a spinning disk?

aaeilm · 2017-01-13 03:56:53

Haha, no worries
Okay cool, I see.
Yeah the media drive is a typical spinning hard drive, my home folder is on the solid state drive.
It happens on both though.
Also happens just in the tty (no X session going)

aaeilm · 2017-01-14 08:48:34

Question!
So, I was able to reproduce this consistently,

1. Edit a file
2. Wait a minute or two (until fans stop running)
3. Save (fans would start up again, vim would pause)

then using hdparm -B I see that my APM level is 1

Would this be causing my issue?
It seems like it could, stopping the HDD so soon then having to wait for it to get ready all the time.
I turned APM off by setting it to 255, and vim is saving without pauses haha but I want to check before I'm certian thats the cause.

Also, because having it off consumes more power, do you perhaps know a good setting to set that to?

ewaller · 2017-01-14 16:25:13

Yes. Your disk was spinning down.

Quoth man hdparm

       -B     Get/set Advanced Power Management feature, if the drive supports it.  A  low  value  means  aggressive
              power  management  and  a  high value means better performance.  Possible settings range from values 1
              through 127 (which permit spin-down), and values 128 through 254 (which do not permit spin-down).  The
              highest  degree  of  power management is attained with a setting of 1, and the highest I/O performance
              with a setting of 254.  A value of 255 tells hdparm to disable Advanced Power Management altogether on
              the drive (not all drives support disabling it, but most do).

ewaller@turing ~ 1006 %sudo hdparm -B /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 APM_level	= 254
ewaller@turing ~ 1007 %

I went for performance. You might try 128. Supposedly, that will provide power savings without allowing the drive to spin down.

Edit: Nice catch, by the way. Good job on isolating the problem.

Last edited by ewaller (2017-01-14 16:32:59)

aaeilm · 2017-01-17 17:41:36

Yeah, I'm trying 128 for now, but cool cool. I'm glad it's fixed, thanks for the help!
and, haha thank you.

Arch Linux

#1 2017-01-12 22:29:30

[SOLVED] Hangs and pauses when accessing HDD

#2 2017-01-12 23:42:46

Re: [SOLVED] Hangs and pauses when accessing HDD

#3 2017-01-13 01:43:34

Re: [SOLVED] Hangs and pauses when accessing HDD

#4 2017-01-13 02:30:25

Re: [SOLVED] Hangs and pauses when accessing HDD

#5 2017-01-13 03:56:53

Re: [SOLVED] Hangs and pauses when accessing HDD

#6 2017-01-14 08:48:34

Re: [SOLVED] Hangs and pauses when accessing HDD

#7 2017-01-14 16:25:13

Re: [SOLVED] Hangs and pauses when accessing HDD

#8 2017-01-17 17:41:36

Re: [SOLVED] Hangs and pauses when accessing HDD

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