My HD stays flickering, before not.

GnaM · 01-07-2005, 09:00 AM

Hi,

For some bizarre reason, when entering KDE my HD LED flickers the entire time.
Even after ten minutes it still continues as if it is preparing for some kind of
alien outer space contact.
This magically happened just today, when I rebooted my comp out of frustration.
The system went beserk, claiming I had no more HD space to my avail while I have at
least a whopping 78 MB !!!
Also I got some error message, something regarding my sound card,
It said something like : Abort sound card, CPU overheat or overload or something....

Anyways, I did ps -A to see what is running and I got this :

PHP Code:



ps -A 
  PID TTY          TIME CMD 
    1 ?        00:00:03 init 
    2 ?        00:00:00 ksoftirqd/0 
    3 ?        00:00:00 events/0 
    4 ?        00:00:00 khelper 
    5 ?        00:00:00 netlink/0 
    6 ?        00:00:03 kblockd/0 
   29 ?        00:00:00 pdflush 
   30 ?        00:00:12 pdflush 
   32 ?        00:00:00 aio/0 
   27 ?        00:00:00 kapmd 
   31 ?        00:00:36 kswapd0 
  615 ?        00:00:00 kseriod 
 1515 ?        00:00:01 reiserfs/0 
 1927 ?        00:00:00 khubd 
 1978 ?        00:00:00 udevd 
 2267 ?        00:00:00 hwscand 
 2626 ?        00:00:00 hwscand 
 2966 ?        00:00:00 syslogd 
 2969 ?        00:00:00 klogd 
 2999 ?        00:00:00 resmgrd 
 3009 ?        00:00:00 portmap 
 3151 ?        00:00:00 sshd 
 3249 ?        00:00:00 powersaved 
 3322 ?        00:00:01 cupsd 
 3394 ?        00:00:00 nscd 
 3493 ?        00:00:00 cron 
 3504 ?        00:00:00 kdm 
 3525 tty1     00:00:00 mingetty 
 3526 tty2     00:00:00 mingetty 
 3527 tty3     00:00:00 mingetty 
 3529 tty4     00:00:00 mingetty 
 3530 tty5     00:00:00 mingetty 
 3532 tty6     00:00:00 mingetty 
 3708 ?        00:00:00 gpg-agent 
 3823 ?        00:00:00 gpg-agent 
 4677 ?        00:00:00 su 
 4678 ?        00:00:00 yast2 
 4711 ?        00:02:20 y2base 
 4810 ?        00:00:00 su 
 4811 ?        00:00:00 bash 
 4921 ?        02:19:26 antivir 
 5238 ?        00:00:01 artsd 
 6146 ?        00:00:00 gpg-agent 
 6208 ?        00:00:11 X 
 6209 ?        00:00:00 kdm 
 6239 ?        00:00:00 startkde 
 6280 ?        00:00:00 gpg-agent 
 6281 ?        00:00:00 ssh-agent 
 6306 ?        00:00:00 kdeinit 
 6309 ?        00:00:00 kdeinit 
 6311 ?        00:00:00 kdeinit 
 6314 ?        00:00:01 kdeinit 
 6325 ?        00:00:00 kdeinit 
 6326 ?        00:00:00 kwrapper 
 6328 ?        00:00:00 kdeinit 
 6329 ?        00:00:02 kdeinit 
 6332 ?        00:00:00 kdeinit 
 6333 ?        00:00:06 kdeinit 
 6335 ?        00:00:03 kdeinit 
 6336 ?        00:00:00 kdeinit 
 6338 ?        00:00:01 kdeinit 
 6340 ?        00:00:01 kdeinit 
 6342 ?        00:00:02 kbluetoothd 
 6344 ?        00:00:01 kdeinit 
 6346 ?        00:00:02 kdeinit 
 6348 ?        00:00:04 kdeinit 
 6349 ?        00:00:01 kdeinit 
 6352 ?        00:00:01 kdeinit 
 6354 ?        00:00:00 kdeinit 
 6359 ?        00:00:03 kdeinit 
 6376 ?        00:00:03 kdeinit 
 6377 pts/1    00:00:00 bash 
 6388 pts/1    00:00:00 ps

Strangely, I don't recall KBLUETOOTHD in that list.
Also so many kdeinit, this can't be normal right ?

Any suggestions as to how I can repair this ?

Regards.

GnaM · 01-07-2005, 09:10 AM

Hmmmm...
I did ps -aux and I got more detailed information,
I guess that explains the numerous kdeinit.

EDIT NOTE ----> removed ps -aux, due it being so unclear. I thought PHP
was smart enough to have a scroll bar....
If you need it, just give a scream, or even better, your email so I can send to you in a better layout than here.

rjlee · 01-07-2005, 09:16 AM

First off, switch to single-user mode by running (as root)

Code:

telinit s

Then run fsck on all of your partitions. You should remount them read-only first, then check them:

Code:

mount /dev/device -o remount,ro && fsck /dev/device

Repeat this for each device listed in /etc/fstab (skip the lines that say “none”).

If that doesn't sort out the problem, then it may be worth looking into your KDE configuration. There do seem to be a lot of kdeinit processes; you should have one kdeinit for each kde application/applet that is running IIRC.

You have a process called antivir; have you installed an anti-virus? If not, then you probably have a rogue process; go to www.clamav.net and download clamav. Check your hard-disk. Also, you might want to try running chrootkit to check for root-kits if antivir really isn't supposed to be there.

The HD LED light could indicate that a lot of swapping is going on, or that you are reading the hard disk a lot. In the first case, install more memory and/or reduce the value of /proc/vm/swappiness. In the second case, add the options “noatime,nodiratime” to your partitions in /etc/fstab.