On Friday 28 January 2005 20.58, S Sim wrote:

Hello,

A similar problem was discussed here http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2003-Feb/2225.html and I can paste the description verbatim, but the solutions proposed did not work for me: "I seem to remember several here complaining about their hard drive led blinking about every 5 seconds and seeing a solution to it as well. I don't remember when those mails come out, so don't know which month to look for them in the Archives."

I have Suse 9.2 on a Dell SmartPC 250N laptop. It appears that something is written to/read from the hard drive every few seconds (2-5). When I boot in failsafe mode, i.e. without the X and KDE, no such disk activity is observed.

Does anyone know how to stop this strange disk activity?

Thanks,

Sergei

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Uneducated guess: The automounter trying to find new cd's or medias? Try shutting that down and see if it persists -- /Rikard --------------------------------------------------------------- Rikard Johnels email : rikjoh@norweb.se Web : http://www.rikjoh.com/users/rikjoh Mob : +46 735 05 51 01 PGP : 0x461CEE56 ---------------------------------------------------------------

On Friday 28 Jan 2005 19:58 pm, S Sim wrote:

Hello,

A similar problem was discussed here http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2003-Feb/2225.html and I can paste the description verbatim, but the solutions proposed did not work for me: "I seem to remember several here complaining about their hard drive led blinking about every 5 seconds and seeing a solution to it as well. I don't remember when those mails come out, so don't know which month to look for them in the Archives."

I have Suse 9.2 on a Dell SmartPC 250N laptop. It appears that something is written to/read from the hard drive every few seconds (2-5). When I boot in failsafe mode, i.e. without the X and KDE, no such disk activity is observed.

Does anyone know how to stop this strange disk activity?

Is the file alteration monitor running? Dylan

Thanks,

Sergei

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S Sim wrote:

I have Suse 9.2 on a Dell SmartPC 250N laptop. It appears that something is written to/read from the hard drive every few seconds (2-5). When I boot in failsafe mode, i.e. without the X and KDE, no such disk activity is observed.

This doesn't apply to your situation but someone else might run into it. I had a blinking hard drive light because of a lose cable on one of my hard drives in the RAID 1 configuration, and it took a while to figure out what was causing it since the system was working perfectly fine. Plugging in the cable and returning the drive to active status in the RAID fixed that problem. At least, the RAID was working just fine. :) Christopher Reimer

S Sim wrote:

Hello,

A similar problem was discussed here http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2003-Feb/2225.html and I can paste the description verbatim, but the solutions proposed did not work for me: "I seem to remember several here complaining about their hard drive led blinking about every 5 seconds and seeing a solution to it as well. I don't remember when those mails come out, so don't know which month to look for them in the Archives."

I have Suse 9.2 on a Dell SmartPC 250N laptop. It appears that something is written to/read from the hard drive every few seconds (2-5). When I boot in failsafe mode, i.e. without the X and KDE, no such disk activity is observed.

Does anyone know how to stop this strange disk activity?

Thanks,

Sergei

I was the one who first raised the issue and in my case I finally traced it to a program in Win4Lin; Win4Lin solved that problem for me. However, others had similar 5-second "flashes" with Patrick Shanahan (Hi Patrick) saying that it was to do with having to update to the newer copy of cups while PL O'Smith traced is his "flashes" to KDE. (None of these applied to my situation.) These latter discussions took place around 20 February 2003 under the Subject Heading of "Blinking HD lite" (which is not the Subject of my messages which resulted in Win4Lin being the culprit for me). Cheers. -- "The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvellously."

I am replying to all previous posts so far. ---

From: Rikard Johnels (rikjoh_at_norweb.se) Date: Fri Jan 28 2005 - 22:37:50 CET Uneducated guess: The automounter trying to find new cd's or medias? Try shutting that down and see if it persists

The automounter is not used: # chkconfig | grep autofs autofs off # ps aux | grep autofs - ---

From: Peter B Van Campen (peterb_at_vancampen.org) Date: Fri Jan 28 2005 - 22:54:39 CET Seti@home client?

No. ---

From: Dylan (dylan_at_dylan.me.uk) Date: Fri Jan 28 2005 - 23:05:46 CET Is the file alteration monitor running?

No: # ps aux | grep fam - ---

From: Randall R Schulz (rschulz_at_sonic.net) Date: Fri Jan 28 2005 - 23:13:03 CET

I'm curious about which activity light you're seeing flash. Is it the hard drive's light,

Yes, the green HD LED.

or is it a light that is on whenever _any_ mass storage request is pending?

No.

Is it really a problem? I'm amazed that people will just stark nuking processes on their system (referring to the message thread you referred to above) just to keep a trickle of disk activity from occurring.

Let's say it's a phenomenon. I believe that curious minds should be encouraged to look into what might cause unexplained phenomena before they develop into problems. I can also hear the characteristic HD crunching sound during each flash. ---

From: Carlos E. R. (robin1.listas_at_tiscali.es) Date: Sat Jan 29 2005 - 00:48:37 CET There are some adjustments in > /etc/sysconfig/powermanagement

To see if power management has anything to do with it, I did # chkconfig | grep acpid acpid off # ps aux | grep acpid root 6 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< 10:55 0:05 [kacpid] root 4842 0.0 0.0 1388 56 ? Ss 10:56 0:00 /usr/sbin/acpid -c /etc/acpi/events.ignore # /etc/init.d/acpid stop # ps aux | grep acpid root 6 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< 10:55 0:05 [kacpid] #/opt/kde3/bin/ksysguard trying to kill kacpid resulted in this output to stdout: ... Launched ok, pid = 10494 Launched ok, pid = 10497 Launched ok, pid = 10500 ... ad infinitum time interval between the above line appearances seems to be the same as the one between the HD LED flashes. kacpid remained active. I am sending my /etc/sysconfig/powermanagement to you in a separate email. Anything interesting there? ---

From: Basil Chupin (blchupin_at_tpg.com.au) Date: Sat Jan 29 2005 - 09:14:27 CET Patrick) saying that it was to do with having to update to the newer copy of cups while

cupsd is not running

PL O'Smith traced is his "flashes" to KDE.

From: Carlos E. R. (robin1.listas_at_tiscali.es) Date: Sat Jan 29 2005 - 12:01:04 CET I wonder if there could be an utility dumping to

Exactly. This is his messaged I referred to in my first message: http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2003-Feb/2225.html His solution did not help me. It may still be KDE, and, even more narrowingly, kacpid... --- proc or something which

PID is requesting disk activity each time. It would help a lot on these cases.

It surely would. Many thanks, but still fighting... Sergei ___________________________________________________________ ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com