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#1 2009-11-01 16:17:38

TomB17
Member
Registered: 2009-09-02
Posts: 102

Need help debugging hang/pause on file access and graphic writes

Frequently, my system will pause for about 10 seconds and then carry on working as normal.  It does this when I access a Samsung 2.5" portable USB connected drive.

When I copy a file from the drive, it will frequently cause Dolphin to lock up for about 10 seconds and then return to complete the task without error.  As you may have guessed, I use KDE as my window manager.  This has happened a couple of times when I'm not accessing the USB HD but it always happens when copying from the USB HD.

During these system pauses, the screen will not update properly, although I can change virtual desktops and some apps still work, as long as they don't need to update the screen.

Also, htop shows the system idling during these system hangs.  Nothing is shown as pinning the CPU.

# uname -a
Linux static65-87-244-151.regina.accesscomm.ca 2.6.31-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Oct 8 11:32:00 CEST 2009 x86_64 AMD Phenom(tm) 9850 Quad-Core Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

As you can see, I am a couple of kernel versions old.  The latest kernel is installed but I don't wish to reboot until next weekend as I have a 12TB RAID array (10 x 1.5TB drives) running EXT3 that will immediately start running a chkdsk the next time I reboot.  It would be a great idea to run chkdsk because it's been a long time since it's ran but it will take 12+ hours so I don't want to do it until I won't need the machine for a day.

When I first installed this system, it was perfect.  I hadn't had such a bug free computing experience since the days of Kubuntu 8.10.  This problem has been happening for months now and the last three kernel updates (up to 2.6.31) haven't fixed it.  For what it's worth, Kubuntu 9.04 with a similar software load exhibited this same behaviour but it was much, much worse.  In fact, Kubuntu was pretty much unusable and that's what brings me to Arch.  I loved Kubuntu, otherwise.  I doubt I'll ever go back, though.

I have considered this problem could be KDE related.  I try to stay current with system updates every weekend.  In fact, I just updated this morning but the issue persists.


Hardware

AMD 9850
Foxconn A7DA-S (790GX/SB750)
8GB RAM
10 x 1.5TB Seagate HDD


Software

x86_64 Arch + KDE v4.3


I would appreciate any thoughts or ideas to collect more information.  I don't know where to go from here.  The logs look clean and htop shows nothing.

Thanks for reading.  smile

Last edited by TomB17 (2009-11-01 16:19:14)

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