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kamui
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Joined: 22 Jul 2003
Posts: 74
Location: SoCal, USA

PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 9:49 am    Post subject: Excesive harddisk reading Reply with quote

I am having the problem of excesive harddisk reading and writing. I have no idea why Gentoo does this. I have had RH, and MDK installed on this same system and they did not have this problem.

My system specs are :
2200 xp athlon
Soyo Dragon Plat MB
1x 512 Mushkin DDR 2100 ram
2x 80gig Seagate 100ata hard drives

I have partitioned the disks :
/dev/hda
1 - 32meg /boot
2 - 900meg /
3 - 30gig /usr

/dev/hdd
1 - 256meg <swap>
2 - 39.7gig /home

hdparm -i /dev/hda reads
Code:

/dev/hda:

 Model=ST340810A, FwRev=3.34, SerialNo=5FB0EQ8B
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=78165360
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
 AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: device does not report version:

 * signifies the current active mode


hdparm -i /dev/hdd reads
Code:
/dev/hdd:

 Model=ST340810A, FwRev=3.34, SerialNo=3FB0LPB5
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
 CurCHS=4047/16/255, CurSects=16511760, LBA=yes, LBAsects=78165360
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
 AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: device does not report version:

 * signifies the current active mode


hdpram -Tt /dev/hda pulls
Code:
/dev/hda:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   812 MB in  2.00 seconds = 406.00 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:   66 MB in  3.03 seconds =  21.78 MB/sec


hdpram -Tt /dev/hdd pulls
Code:
/dev/hdd:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   816 MB in  2.00 seconds = 408.00 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:   82 MB in  3.06 seconds =  26.75 MB/sec


hdpram was run while in flux so they might be a little low but close...

Can't really think of anything else that migth help. If you think there is something I need to add just let me know. Thanks in advance to everyone who looks at this.
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||kafre||
Tux's lil' helper
Tux's lil' helper


Joined: 15 Sep 2003
Posts: 114

PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 11:06 am    Post subject: updatedb? Reply with quote

i have a similar issue, but its due to updatedb. dont know why it starts automatically so the first 10 minuttes the harddisk is working hard, everything works slow. Type top and look if any proccess is doing anything strange
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Dracnor
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Joined: 08 Jun 2003
Posts: 397
Location: Pennsylvania

PostPosted: Thu Sep 18, 2003 8:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Have a look at your fstab. I had a problem once where it was trying to use swap space but I had it configured wrong in the fstab, and it would run out of physical ram but had nowhere to go. It caused a tremendous amount of hdd usage.

As far as updatedb, I believe it is a cron job set. Take a look at those conf file in /etc and you can eliminate it from there if you wish.
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kamui
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Joined: 22 Jul 2003
Posts: 74
Location: SoCal, USA

PostPosted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 4:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

What is the job of updatedb? is it needed?
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Dracnor
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Location: Pennsylvania

PostPosted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 4:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

you can then use

locate name_of_file

and it will find it for you. Instead of using find /directory -name blah blah blah it is faster to have a db of locations of the files when you want to search for something.
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travisau
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Joined: 06 Apr 2003
Posts: 63

PostPosted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 11:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

updatedb is the job that maintains the database that allows the locate command to work. Since the updatedb makes a catalog of all the files on your hd you can search large drives multiple times almost instantanoeusly. The down side is that any changes made after the updatedb are run are not reflected in the catalog until another updatedb is run. You can kill it at any time you want to though. Its not necessary for your sys to function especially if you don't use locate. There is probably a nicer way to do this but disabling it can be accomplished by commenting out these lines in /etc/cron.daily/slocate.

/usr/bin/updatedb
/usr/bin/updatedb -f proc
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kamui
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Joined: 22 Jul 2003
Posts: 74
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 12:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ic, another question then, is the locate command that workes with updatedb used by any other programs or scritps? Will I be braking anything by removing this tack from my cron config?
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