[SOLVED] Excessive IO activity by mount.ntfs-3g on startup

zrogee · 11-07-2013, 12:38 PM

So, I have a problem that has puzzled me for quite some time.
In my /etc/fstab file I use the following line to mount an NTFS drive in Linux (a seperate drive, if that makes any difference):

Code:

/dev/sda2     /home/user/Downloads/win7     ntfs-3g     defaults  0  0

When I login, iotop will look like this for 8-12 minutes before returning to normal:

CPU usage is usually unaffected, but I can't really do anything that involves manipulating files.
Am I using the ntfs-3g driver incorrectly?

syg00 · 11-07-2013, 07:28 PM

I can't read the jpeg.
Have you tried running chkdsk against it (from Windoze) ?.

jefro · 11-07-2013, 07:57 PM

Defrag too maybe?

Are some files needed or trying to be accessed when it mounts?

zrogee · 11-08-2013, 08:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

I can't read the jpeg.

I made a thumbnail which links to a bigger jpeg, because I wasn't too sure about the rules on posting images on this forum.
I should've made that clearer in my first post.

Thanks for the tips. I tried both chkdsk and defragging; chkdsk reported no problems and defragmentation was minimal (I still went ahead and completed a full defrag).
The problem is still there, and I'm just about ready to throw in the towel and convert the drive to ext4.

syg00 · 11-08-2013, 03:42 PM

I don't have any (major) issues with ntfs-3g - I run NTFS mounts everywhere as I keep the Windoze that systems ship with. But I only normally read from the Linux side.
I tried an installable driver for ext3 on Windoze years ago and wasn't happy with the result. Gave up on it - others have reported better results (if you are planning on that).

zrogee · 11-08-2013, 03:47 PM

Actually, I was just thinking of wiping the Windows drive completely and turning it into an ext4 data drive. Pretty much spend all of my time in Linux - I just wanted to access music/data files on the Windows drive using ntfs-3g.

jefro · 11-09-2013, 04:49 PM

When you remove the fstab entry and then do a normal mount does it have a similar issue?

zrogee · 11-10-2013, 04:31 AM

I tried removing the fstab entry, and although mount.ntfs-3g didn't spike in IO activity on startup it did as soon as I manually mounted the drive in KDE.

zrogee · 11-18-2013, 07:54 AM

I think I found a solution.

By closely watching iotop for the duration of the 99% activity attributed to "mount.ntfs-3g", I discovered a brief but noticeable IO spike by "updatedb.mlocate" just after the "mount.ntfs-3g" spike dissappeared.

It seems like (on Ubuntu systems) updatedb.mlocate is set to run daily (and possibly more often than that) by cron.
I killed the process, disabled the cron.daily script and deleted the database:

Code:

sudo killall updatedb.mlocate
sudo chmod -x /etc/cron.daily/mlocate
sudo rm /var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db

So far (going on a couple of days) I haven't had the otherwise recurring issue of high IO activity by "mount.ntfs-3g".