This problem has been bugging me for some time now...

I love Slack... I love Gnome... but for some reason with gnome 2.6, both supplied by Slackware and Dropline, I get odd hard drive writes every three seconds or so...

I have only observed this problem on my home computer, using Slackware 10 and Gnome 2.6. .
I have used Gnome 2.6 and Gentoo without a problem... and Slackware 9.1 and Gnome 2.4 without a problem. I have even used Slack 10 and Gnome 2.6 on other hardware without a problem.

So I have no clue as to why this is happening.

It's about every three seconds or so, on the dot, about a 25k write to the root partition. I have noted this through Gkrellm and it buggs the hell out of me.

My system is Athlon based, on a Via KT400 chipset, with 768 megs of Ram.

Any thoughts?

How can I tell which file is being written to?

How can I tell which process is doing the writing?

and lastly, WTF?

(PS. as I implyed, it only happens under Gnome 2.6, every other window manager runs fine)

After i just read your post, i just noticed i get the same thing with my scsi hard drive, but every 12 seconds or so (slack 10, gnome 2.6).. But i'm not worried, you can hardly hear it from the sound of the machine as a whole. I'm more worried about the "needle poking through your ear" sharp high pitch sound of the drive's rpm.

Don't get me wrong... I can't hear it either.

BUT, this is still a problem that I'd like to stop. Considering that it is write activity, (not read), I am worried.

This activity is absenct on other systems running Slack 10 and Gnome 2.6. .. and I have gone back and forth on differnet distros on the same hardware with Gnome 2.6. . . so it must be a skack/my-hardware/gnome problem.

Once again... any help would be nice.

(like how to tell what program is using disk access or what program is writing to disk at a given time)

My guess is that you *could* find something in the system log... Application > System tools > System log.

Well I found the program that was causing the writes...

gconfd

(*shakes fist*)

So I removed the gconf package, which broke anything Gnome related. . . so it looks like I'm gonna need gconf. (hehe... I knew it would break Gnome... just wanted to see it happen.)


Any thoughts on how I can tell what gconfd is doing?

Oh no...

now I have noted the odd problem in enlightenment too. .. damn.

And it's not gconfd... or at least if it is... then I don't know what is causing it in enlightenment.



I don't know what I'll do ... I might switch distros again.. I was core Slack for the first year and a bit on linux... then I dipped into the distro pool... I just came back to slack a few weeks ago and I love it. But, Gnome is my desktop, and if I can't have it with slack then I will with another distro.

While going through the kernel (2.4.26), i noticed something that might be of use to you...

Read the Help on Character devices > watchdog cards.

do you use ext3 or reiserfs they save write times to files on the file
maybe ext2 also i forget


you can try adding this to your /etc/fstab
try adding the noatime

in thery. adding noatime to my fstab will effect the whole system when dealing with my hard drive... however, it is not my whole system that has the problem... it is only seen in Gnome 2.6, and Enlightenment while using Slack 10.

That said... I will try the addition of noatime to my fstab when I get home tonight, because at this poin I'll try anything. (don't want to leave slack)



My partition is formated with ReiserFS. . .

And I am using Linux Kernel 2.6.8.1 from kernel.org. (and yes. I have tried with the stock 2.4.26 kernel -- it does not help)

Some program write some lines in log files sometimes...It may be that, how do you compare writting status with other window manager, only with gkrell ?

you can add noatime to certain partitions so turn in off for /var /home and so on, then leave it on for the other partitions.

Yes, some programs do write to some log files. . . but not every three seconds on the dot.

I compare it with gkrellm2. . .