Guest janusz Posted April 18, 2007 Report Share Posted April 18, 2007 Greetings! I'm a newbie and have a concern. My setup is triple boot: I have two HDs: HD0.=-Win XP, HD1=Mandriva 2007 Free & Freespire. Mandriva Linux Free version 2007.0. Mandriva Display Manager configured for KDM. Desktop machine configured as "desktop" in Mandriva. I have noticed that every 2-3 seconds that HD1 shows disk activity. I do not have this activity with Freespire (partition on the same HD). There is some kind of read/write going on, it seems. I disconnected DSL and it made no difference. It makes no difference if I have other software running or if the OS is idle. I know that some disk activity is normal but this never stops. I have read various posts to forums but nothing that I can relate my problem to or at least understand. I did think that it might have something to do with the screensaver. Assessing screensaver in KDE control panel bounces back to login screen. I disabled the screensaver in /lib/mandriva/kde-profiles/common/share/config/ by changing Enabled=true to Enabled=false in the [screensaver] section. I set the timeout to 0. Maybe there is a better way but it seems to have worked but I wonder if this might be related in any way -- guessing. Interestingly, KDE System Guard Process Table shows that "X" in etc/X11/X seems to be the source of this activity -- or is responding to something. In user% and system% columns "X" ranges from .50 to 6.50. The "X" line jumps to the top and back down to a lower level every 2-3 seconds. It is the only process that is doing this. I would appreciate any suggestions as to the solution. Thanks! j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted April 18, 2007 Report Share Posted April 18, 2007 Hmm.. If you don't have beagle running (which indexes now and then thus accesses the harddisk), then I would say, check the running processes with top and check the i/o on your system with vmstat 1 Maybe that can give you a hint. But it is not improbable that you have a problem with the X-server. Oh, I forgot: Welcome aboard. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted April 18, 2007 Report Share Posted April 18, 2007 top does the same thing as KDE System Guard Process Table, for the most part. It may display some extra information, but that information may be confusing to a "newbie" such as yourself. It is a command-line application, meaning you have to run it from a terminal (in KDE, this is the program Konsole). vmstat 1 is also a command-line application. Just enter it at the prompt you get (similar to DOS) in Konsole. Also, some further information: What kind of video card do you have? If it's ATI or NVIDIA, did you get the download the drivers from their respective sites or are you using the defaults that come with Mandriva? As far as beagle, if you aren't using this or just want to test to see if it is the source of the problem, uninstall it from the Mandriva Control Center (aka Configure My Computer) under Software -> Remove Software (IIRC). Then reboot your system, and it should no longer be running - then you can wait and see if the HD activity continues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest janusz Posted April 18, 2007 Report Share Posted April 18, 2007 1. I do not have beagle installed. 2. I ran vmstat 1. Nothing stood out. 3. Video card: Matrox Millennium G4350. It was on the list of video cards when I installed so I assume the default drivers were installed. Options: 3D hardware acceleration, enable translucency, hardware accelerated mouse pointer, and auto start graphical interface (Xorg) upon booting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted April 18, 2007 Report Share Posted April 18, 2007 Please run your system some time without the 3D stuff and check if it still accesses the drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest janusz Posted April 18, 2007 Report Share Posted April 18, 2007 I unchecked "3D hardware acceleration." This did not stop the drive activity but it seems to have slowed it down to every 5-6 seconds or so. KDE System Guard Process Table shows "X" not bouncing around as much. I will also disable "translucency" to see what happens but that will have to wait until I get back from a business trip (back late Thursday). What about the "hardware accelerated mouse pointer" -- if this is disabled how will that effect the mouse, etc.?? Thanks for the help. j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted April 19, 2007 Report Share Posted April 19, 2007 it wouldnt be X, as the percentages you saw were CPU usage, not disk usage. The only hdd usage X deals with after startup is logfiles. I really doubt it's spitting things out every second, X tends to be pretty quiet. As said above, turn off beagle or adjust it's indexing options. And if your system has it, give us the output of 'pstree', which you can run in 'konsole'which should give us a reasonable idea of what's running and could be using the disk. James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted April 19, 2007 Report Share Posted April 19, 2007 Also check to see if your swap is being used. This could also be indicative as to your hard disk being accessed. How much memory does your system have? I tend to make a change to stop swap getting used unless it's really needed. You edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add the line: vm.swappiness = 10 then you do: sysctl -p to activate it. Check it's become active with: cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness if it reports "10", then it's made the change. The default is 60. Just a thought, it might help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emmanuel_uk Posted April 19, 2007 Report Share Posted April 19, 2007 no newbie ideas here, but the command lsof can be used to see which files are opened it would take some reading / programming to identify the culprit you may use top to find the process id, and then you might get a cross between lsof output and pid ok, this is the extreme way of doing it the other nasty way is to us konqueror and find which files have changed in the last 3 seconds say then well find the culprit uninstall beagle, and kate (?) as well report to thread on what top tells you, unlikely X the culprit, so what are the other processes? stop as many services as possible, and as many software, or applets also could be a cron backup or whatever so you will need to look into this (unlikely because cron run at most every minutes, but maybe whatever it does takes time) disconnect even internet maybe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted April 19, 2007 Report Share Posted April 19, 2007 The other program that caused disk activity was kat in Mandriva 2006, don't know if this still exists in 2007 or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emmanuel_uk Posted April 19, 2007 Report Share Posted April 19, 2007 kate, kat, kit kat, cat, tac toc toc, loosing my head indeed, yes kat it was not kate because kate is there as well also check clamav or other antivirus not doing a scan and also smartd doign a HD smart attribute long test (but that should stop once doing anything else) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted April 19, 2007 Report Share Posted April 19, 2007 freshclam also does the downloading, but of course if you're not connected to the internet, it shouldn't be doing anything. Post a list of your services too, we can probably disable a lot of them to free memory and maybe help fix it: chkconfig --list in a console window, and then copy and paste the results here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinynorman Posted April 19, 2007 Report Share Posted April 19, 2007 The other program that caused disk activity was kat in Mandriva 2006, don't know if this still exists in 2007 or not. Kat is not in the 2007 Free package list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted April 19, 2007 Report Share Posted April 19, 2007 Yup, beagle replaced kat (beagle actually existed first anyways). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest janusz Posted April 20, 2007 Report Share Posted April 20, 2007 Greetings! Okay. Here are the requested info: 1. beagle. As mentioned earlier I do not have this installed. 2. pstree [root@localhost ~]# pstree init???acpid ??atd ??avahi-daemon ??clamd ??crond ??cupsd ??2*[dbus-daemon] ??dbus-launch ??dcopserver ??dhclient ??events/0 ??freshclam ??gam_server ??hald???hald-runner???hald-addon-acpi ? ??hald-addon-keyb ? ??3*[hald-addon-stor] ??ifplugd ??imwheel ??kaccess ??kded ??kdeinit???artsd ? ??kio_file ? ??klauncher ? ??konsole???bash???pstree ? ? ??bash ? ??2*[kwin] ? ??kwrite ? ??mdkapplet ? ??net_applet ? ??opera ? ??xsettings-kde ??2*[kdesktop] ??kdesud ??kdm???X ? ??kdm???startkde???kwrapper ??khelper ??2*[khotkeys] ??2*[kicker] ??klipper ??klogd ??knotify ??korgac ??ksmserver ??ksoftirqd/0 ??kswapd0 ??kthread???ac97/0 ? ??aio/0 ? ??kacpid ? ??kblockd/0 ? ??kgameportd ? ??khubd ? ??3*[kjournald] ? ??kpsmoused ? ??kseriod ? ??2*[pdflush] ? ??scsi_eh_0 ? ??usb-storage ??lisa ??mandi ??migration/0 ??6*[mingetty] ??ntpd ??portmap ??rpc.statd ??s2u ??syslogd ??udevd ??wwasher???wwasher???2*[{wwasher}] ??xfs ??xinetd [root@localhost ~]# 2. No indication whatsoever that swap being used. KDE System Guard shows not Swap activity at all. Swap: 1500 MB RAM: 1GB ianw1974 -- I made the changes you suggester (ref swap). 3. chkconfig --list [root@localhost ~]# chkconfig --list acpi 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off acpid 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off alsa 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off atd 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off avahi-daemon 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:off 5:on 6:off clamd 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off crond 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off cups 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off dm 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:on 6:off freshclam 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off haldaemon 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off harddrake 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off iptables 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off jexec 0:on 1:on 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:on keytable 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off kheader 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:off 5:on 6:off lisa 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off mandi 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off messagebus 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off mtink 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off netfs 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off network 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off network-up 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off nfslock 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off ntpd 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off numlock 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off oki4daemon 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off partmon 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off portmap 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off shorewall 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off sound 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off syslog 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off wltool 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off xfs 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off xinetd 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off xinetd based services: cups-lpd: off rsync: off [root@localhost ~]# 4. Antivirus. Looking over the above it appears that I have clamd antivirus and freshclam. Frankly, I have no idea how this program is accessed (not on menu). In any case, I still get the hd activity when DSL is disconnected. Thanks for all the suggestion. j - Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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