who is running

septanla · 11-20-2005, 10:28 PM

I have some problem with my UBUNTU system on an IBM thinkpad T21. From time to time, the harddisk will be busy. The symptom is the harddisk light splah all the time. I can not interrupt, even the mouse hangs.

I tried to use ps command to find out which process is accessing the harddisk from the huge list of processes, but I am not sure how to do it.

Pls help.

Thanks

Septanla

cs-cam · 11-20-2005, 10:34 PM

top might be more helpful than ps, especially if you aren't sure what you're looking at. One thing to check though, is DMA turn on for the disk? Try running this and post the output:

Code:

/sbin/hdparm /dev/hda

septanla · 11-20-2005, 10:45 PM

the output is as follows:

/dev/hda:
multcount = 0 (off)
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 38760/16/63, sectors = 20003880960, start = 0

what is the meaning?

Thanks a lot

pAn1k · 11-20-2005, 11:21 PM

Like he said try typing in "top" in a terminal, it will give you a lot of details. If I had to guess I would say that there are some things in your cron tabs running like mandb or a couple of other tings. Cron tabs allow you to have programs, scripts, or whatever to run at specified intervals. Good luck!

angkor · 11-21-2005, 06:15 AM

Yup, it's probably 'updatedb' running. It updates your locate database. In Ubuntu it's default setting is once a day I think.

What are the specs of your thinkpad because I dont experience any performance drop when 'updatedb' runs.

ctkroeker · 11-21-2005, 01:59 PM

Quote:

Who's running

Not me, I'm sitting.