Noticed lately that if I mount and unmount a usb thumb drive the wall clock time of my number crunching runs more than doubles. The internal tracked compute time stays roughly the same. top shows the max process having 46% instead of the usual 99.9%. xload shows the system at over 300% use. top shows the second highest load from udevd or udevsd, can't remember exactly, at a seemingly small 13%, but, if I kill it, the system returns to normal. Something in udev is really thrashing around.

Anyone else seen similar symptoms?

TNWestTex

are you using auto to detect the fs type on the usb stick?

Perhaps, I just use the file system is vfat and adding isn't necessary.

I didn't test it, but changing the setting speeds up mount time on my system. was just wondering if the auto setting is whats eating up the processes.

using auto will loop through all file systems supported by the kernel, in the order listed in /proc/filesystems. You can change the order by creating/editing the file /etc/filesystems, or specify the filesystem at mount time. Note that if you have an entry for a device in your /etc/fstab and then try to mount it with other options you may have troubles.