Constant hard drive reads
 

I have a dual boot AMD Turion laptop with 1.5 gb ram and 100 gb HD. When I boot into Ubuntu 8.04 the system seems to keep accessing the HD about every half second. Literally, it's just read/off read/off read/off showing on the HD light. GKRELLM shows at least 164k and occasionally more for disk activity, however, so I'm not sure what is going on. Any suggestions would be appreciated, as listening to it read and seeing the light flashing on and off constantly is driving me nuts. It doesn't seem to do this when I boot to the Windows XP side of the machine.
Thanks!
KP

It was an issue with an earlier version of Ubuntu. The solution was to put in a script in /etc.

In your case check up serviceconfig first.

Thanks amani. I have to admit I'm not really sure what to check. I opened the services and don't see anything obvious that would be causing this, but will confess I don't know all that I need to in Linux yet. Thanks for you help!
KP

Full Solution (from a big thread):


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(Poster Pneuma)

1) Enable laptop mode. This will ensure that the laptop-mode-tools program will actually be able to run.
Go to Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal and type in
"sudo gedit /etc/default/acpi-support", then your password when prompted. Search for where it says "ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE" and set it from "ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=false" to "ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true". Then save it and exit.
2) Get laptop-mode-tools and install it.

3) Set laptop-mode-tools to run even when on AC Power, otherwise you'll still have clicking when you're plugged in. Go back to the Terminal and type "sudo gedit /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf" and give the password if prompted. In gedit, search for "ON_AC". You should change "ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_ON_AC=0" to "ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_ON_AC=1" so that laptop-mode-tools will work even when your laptop is on AC power. Save and quit.
4) Turn on laptop-mode-tools. Go back to the Terminal and type "sudo /etc/init.d/laptop-mode start". This should start up laptop-mode. You can check to make sure that laptop-mode is on by typing "sudo /etc/init.d/laptop-mode status". A nonzero value after where it says “/proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode” indicates that it's activated. Now, in my case the "start" command reassured me that laptop-mode was on, but then the "status" command gave me a 0 value. That was because I was on AC power, and I hadn't done step 3. Yours should be a nonzero value.
5) The clicking sound should have stopped by now. Now just set it so that laptop-mode will come on every time you boot. To do this, go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions, then click "Add" to add a new startup program. In the "Command" field, put "/etc/init.d/laptop-mode start". For "Name" or "Comment", put whatever you want.

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Thanks amani! I followed the directions, but it's still doing it. My machine already had laptop-tools installed as it turned out, but I followed all other directions and it's still doing it. I'm just baffled as to what is causing this.
KP

Are you sure its not something indexing the hard disk? There are various programs (beagle/Kerry beagle/Updatedb/locate/slocate/...) that help you find files, but they have to index the disk first. What usually happens is that this settles down after a while if you let it run to completion.

You might want to look for which programs are using up lots of processor time and see if they seem to be doing this kind of thing. (Try top/ksysguard/...and I've forgotten what the gnome system monitor program is called. System Montor, maybe?)

Thanks for the suggestions, salasi. I thought about the indexing too, but can't imagine it needs to continue doing that for hours upon hours. I've had Ubuntu running on this machine for awhile now, so I wouldn't think indexing would still need go on that much, but I don't know. I'll take a look at top and see what it says.
Thanks!
KP

I am pleased to say I finally found the problem. Through trial and error I found the culprit to be the klogd computer activity logger.
KP

hehe klogd is what cuased ubuntu 8.04 for me to hang so I switch back to 7.10 & kubuntu :)

That's really odd. You wouldn't think that would cause such trouble, but it clearly has a problem somewhere. Thanks for the info!
KP

is it installed automatically? i dont want to run into the same problem

Linux Archive

yes klogd is by default installed...