Hi all,

I am using Fedora core 3 the problem is sometime my system getting hang and my harddisk LED keeps on glowing .

I am using XFCE(4.0.2) .Occasionally GNOME .

My Processer is AMD Athlon 783 MHZ.

What is the problem ? please tell me how to resolve it .

One more question .
Is there any program for Linux to check the harddisk ?


Thanks

There is no valuable information to figure out what is going on with your machine.

Next time your harddisk start to trashing, type in a terminal the command "free" and give us the output in this same thread.

This info is the starting point to debug this issue.


Sure. It is fsck. You must run it on a unmounted partition. It refuses to run in a live partition.
By default it checks the filesystem structure.
If you want to check the media for badblocks, guess what ?, the program is named badblocks.
I do not advise you to run theses programs without a strong knowledge of what you are doing. You really can destroy all data, beyond any chance of repair.

Well, really running 'free' is good idea, because what is described is symptom of sudden heavy swapping... How much RAM and what applications?

Probably the utility updatedb is running to scan all drives and update the locate index file.

It is better to use top instead of free. Check for CPU and swap usage. If swap is getting a lot use, it is time to add more memory or optimize the kernel memory settings.

fsck can be run on a mounted partition, but it safer to run on unmounted partition. Just make sure you remount the partition as read-only. If it is the partition that contains logging files, turn off syslogd. I recommend running fsck in pretend mode or what is going to do mode.