Continuous Hard Disk Read/Write on Mandrake kernel 2.6.8
I have a Windows-like problem with a Linux install. After I run several programs like, Mozilla, xpdf, etc, it starts to take longer and longer accessing the hard drive until finally it just sits there and reads or writes to the hard drive (led flickers) and won't respond to any commands (for like 30 seconds to a minute) such as ctrl-alt-bksp, ctrl-alt-Fkey, ssh requests or mouse clicks. Oddly the mouse pointer does move sometimes. Sometimes I am able to shut it down, other times I just reset it w/ the power. This machine is used primarily for Desktop purposes. It does not have anything other than mouse, keyboard, monitor and power connected.
I have installed Linux on 8-9 computers and this one is the only one I have ever seen a problem like this. Any ideas? What info do you need or suggest I look at to help troubleshoot this stange problem? The hard-drive is fairly new, the machine before this that it was in died due to a CPU Fan failure so it wasn't used long. Its an 80G Western Digital IDE |
How much RAM in your machine. Could be excessive swapping going on if you're limited on RAM.
Code:
free -m Code:
crontab -e when it slows down, run this command as root to see if updatedb is running: Code:
pidof updatedb Code:
ps aux | grep updatedb You could also look into which parameters your drive is using. For instance, if your drive supports DMA but you're in PIO mode, it will go slow whenever it's heavily used. Use the "hdparm" command to view/tweak the hard drive's settings. To learn more: Code:
man hdparm Code:
dmesg | less Code:
less /var/log/messages |
Thank you so much for your time and suggestions.
I have analyzed the hardisk using all of the command line tools including fsck -f (mounted from Knoppix) and checking the blocks using some block checking program that was a pain to use. Anyway Everything checks out clean. Here is some related info I found involving Swap space from less /var/log/messages : Code:
Dec 27 08:59:05 installers kernel: EXT3 FS on hda2, internal journal Code:
Dec 27 08:58:22 installers fsck: ^B Code:
Dec 27 13:21:53 installers kernel: Symbols match kernel version 2.6.8. Code:
total used free shared buffers cached Code:
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfb430, last bus=1 Code:
[drm] Initialized mga 3.1.0 20021029 on minor 0: Code:
cat /etc/fstab | grep swap |
One of your boot scripts is enabling swap in the boot sequence. Even though you don't have a swap partition, it still prints the message "enabling swap". What I'd do right away is to create and start using a swap partition.
Use Code:
fdick /dev/hda Then do: Code:
mkswap /dev/hda? Then do: Code:
swapon /dev/hda? If all goes well, just add a swap entry in /etc/fstab You definitely need some swap space, especially since you only have 190MB of RAM. Maybe this will help solve your problem. |
How do I add this to fstab? Should I tell the bootscript not to swap?
Quote:
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Here's what my swap entry in my /etc/fstab file looks like:
Code:
/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0 |
As said, not enough ram and no swap... You can make a swap file as well if you don't have a partition available. There is info on how to create a swap file in
man mkswap |
Adding the entry to fstab fixed the problem! Thank you so much. Before doing this I was unable keep the swap settings through a reboot.
For some reason the Mandrake gui partition manager would update the init scripts, but didn't set the swap settings correctly that I gave it. Everything is working solid and quick. Thanks again WindowBreaker! -Brian |
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