Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1532 mails)
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Re: [opensuse] openSUSE 10.2, desktop PC, disk being constantly written to. Any way to reduce it?
- From: "Carlos E. R." <robin.listas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2007 13:12:45 +0200 (CEST)
- Message-id: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0707011226430.5326@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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The Sunday 2007-07-01 at 01:16 +0300, Tero Pesonen wrote:
...
> How does it show? Well, first of all, there's constantly (every few seconds)
> from some 8 to few dozens blocks being written, according to iostat. Almost no
> reading at all. Then, every so often, maybe after every 2 or 3 minutes (I'm
> not sure yet if this varies), it writes a bigger burst of data, one that I can
> easily hear the hard drive doing, and it can least a few seconds, but less
> than 10 seconds I'd say.
Have a look at variables like ACPI_THROTTLED_KUPDATED_INTERVAL in
/etc/sysconfig/powermanagement. I think there are more of the sort.
> I didn't find any way to monitor which files are constantly being written to.
A pity.
> So I tried to find via kfind which files have most recently been written to
> (access date changed to current.) There were tons of those, but at least it
> seems that in /sys and especially in /proc huge amount of files are updated so
> that they're always marked as having been updated at the same time as the
> current time shown by system clock. Not even a minute behind, never.
However, those two folders hold "virtual" files, so they can't be
affecting.
> All my hda partitoons were formatted for SuSE 9.3 when it was installed, and
> are ReiserFS. According to Yast partitioner, they seem to have been set to
> "ordered data mode" from the three possible (journal, ordered, writeback.)
> This is what was then set by default, as I don't remember to having changed
> those.
Add options "noatime,nodiratime" to your fstab file. Every time a file is
read, the time when it is read is written to the filesystem, causing
activity. I'm also thinking of /proc and /sys dirs: they files are
virtual, but the directories themselves are physical, and therefore, their
'atimes" are written to the HD.
> Why is this constant I/O a problem? Well, I have a feeling my old SuSE 9.3 did
> not do this. What is more, I'm worried if my poor IDE hard drive can take all
> this strain the system is putting on it. If my hard disk is writing 24h/day,
> how long will it last before it dies under such server-level use? The heads
> need to constantly move and write... and these standard IDE HDD's are
> definitely no server level units that are designed to perform under constant
> stress.
Well, the disk will certainly not go to sleep, but I have noticed this
behaviour ever since I started using linux. Windows did not behave this
way (3.11 at the time): I noticed my disk went to sleep because I had to
wait for it to wake up a few seconds after 20 minutes of not using the
computer. This doesn't happen with the disk holding "/" in linux, but it
might happen with data disks.
> I've also read on the web about
> "laptop modes" etc. that avoid excess and unnecessary disk I/O to allow
> spinn-downs etc. Could something like this be employed on my desktop PC?
Yes, probably.
> Would
> there be anything in /etc/sysconfig to edit--I already even turned off all
> weird sounding man pages related jobs put there in "cron".
I don't think cron will have much effect. But yes, there are settings in
the file I mentioned, and maybe in /etc/sysconfig/powersave/disk. Probably
better to use yast to adjust those - not quite, not all settings are
accesible. You can even add a scheme, and it will be created in that dir,
where you can further fine tune it.
> And above all, do others' systems show similar disk I/O behaviour?
Yes. I haven't manage to discover "who" is the culprit, but yes.
> Oh, almost forgot: I don't offer any network services etc. Not even SSH like I
> used to.
Don't forget log entries...
- --
Cheers,
Carlos E. R.
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The Sunday 2007-07-01 at 01:16 +0300, Tero Pesonen wrote:
...
> How does it show? Well, first of all, there's constantly (every few seconds)
> from some 8 to few dozens blocks being written, according to iostat. Almost no
> reading at all. Then, every so often, maybe after every 2 or 3 minutes (I'm
> not sure yet if this varies), it writes a bigger burst of data, one that I can
> easily hear the hard drive doing, and it can least a few seconds, but less
> than 10 seconds I'd say.
Have a look at variables like ACPI_THROTTLED_KUPDATED_INTERVAL in
/etc/sysconfig/powermanagement. I think there are more of the sort.
> I didn't find any way to monitor which files are constantly being written to.
A pity.
> So I tried to find via kfind which files have most recently been written to
> (access date changed to current.) There were tons of those, but at least it
> seems that in /sys and especially in /proc huge amount of files are updated so
> that they're always marked as having been updated at the same time as the
> current time shown by system clock. Not even a minute behind, never.
However, those two folders hold "virtual" files, so they can't be
affecting.
> All my hda partitoons were formatted for SuSE 9.3 when it was installed, and
> are ReiserFS. According to Yast partitioner, they seem to have been set to
> "ordered data mode" from the three possible (journal, ordered, writeback.)
> This is what was then set by default, as I don't remember to having changed
> those.
Add options "noatime,nodiratime" to your fstab file. Every time a file is
read, the time when it is read is written to the filesystem, causing
activity. I'm also thinking of /proc and /sys dirs: they files are
virtual, but the directories themselves are physical, and therefore, their
'atimes" are written to the HD.
> Why is this constant I/O a problem? Well, I have a feeling my old SuSE 9.3 did
> not do this. What is more, I'm worried if my poor IDE hard drive can take all
> this strain the system is putting on it. If my hard disk is writing 24h/day,
> how long will it last before it dies under such server-level use? The heads
> need to constantly move and write... and these standard IDE HDD's are
> definitely no server level units that are designed to perform under constant
> stress.
Well, the disk will certainly not go to sleep, but I have noticed this
behaviour ever since I started using linux. Windows did not behave this
way (3.11 at the time): I noticed my disk went to sleep because I had to
wait for it to wake up a few seconds after 20 minutes of not using the
computer. This doesn't happen with the disk holding "/" in linux, but it
might happen with data disks.
> I've also read on the web about
> "laptop modes" etc. that avoid excess and unnecessary disk I/O to allow
> spinn-downs etc. Could something like this be employed on my desktop PC?
Yes, probably.
> Would
> there be anything in /etc/sysconfig to edit--I already even turned off all
> weird sounding man pages related jobs put there in "cron".
I don't think cron will have much effect. But yes, there are settings in
the file I mentioned, and maybe in /etc/sysconfig/powersave/disk. Probably
better to use yast to adjust those - not quite, not all settings are
accesible. You can even add a scheme, and it will be created in that dir,
where you can further fine tune it.
> And above all, do others' systems show similar disk I/O behaviour?
Yes. I haven't manage to discover "who" is the culprit, but yes.
> Oh, almost forgot: I don't offer any network services etc. Not even SSH like I
> used to.
Don't forget log entries...
- --
Cheers,
Carlos E. R.
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=QSNM
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