Why is my hard drive going nuts?

[ka9qlq]

Lately my hard drive keeps flashing and gkrellm shows a constant 3-5 mbs transfer on the hard drive even when there shouldn't be anything going on. I closed Skype and ktorrent and still does it. Is there something that would show me what is constantly wanting HD IO?
Thanks
Alvin

[dibl]

Re: Why is my hard drive going nuts?

top

will show the running processes in descending order of resource consumption. Maybe you can deduce which one is a hard drive hog.

[ka9qlq]

Re: Why is my hard drive going nuts?

The cpu doesn't seem that busy

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
2535 root 10 -5 0 0 0 D 4 0.0 34:51.06 kjournald
1 root 19 0 2948 532 480 S 0 0.0 0:01.47 init
2 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.07 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
7 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:01.02 ksoftirqd/1
8 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/1
9 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 events/0
10 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 events/1
11 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 khelper
31 root 16 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 kblockd/0
32 root 13 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.60 kblockd/1
33 root 20 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
34 root 20 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_notify
179 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod
208 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:23.15 kswapd0
259 root 12 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0
260 root 12 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/1
2171 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ata/0
2172 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ata/1
2173 root 16 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ata_aux
2193 root 20 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksuspend_usbd
2196 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd
2595 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
2596 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_1
2743 root 17 -4 3052 472 404 S 0 0.0 0:00.31 udevd
3819 root 18 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kpsmoused
4074 root 16 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_2
4075 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 usb-storage
4300 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:01.79 kjournald

[dibl]

Re: Why is my hard drive going nuts?

Is that an ext3 filesystem? It's interesting that kjournald is at the top of the list --that's a daemon that runs the filesystem journal, I believe. What about swap - is it being used? I think there's a screen in Kinfocenter for memory, where you graphically see the memory and swap usage.

That's all I can think of ATM.

[ka9qlq]

Re: Why is my hard drive going nuts?

It ext3 and I'm using 163 of a 2 gig partition. Why would kjournald be wigging?

[dibl]

Re: Why is my hard drive going nuts?

Here's some information, and some additional links. Looks like there are things you can do in /etc/fstab to reduce the rate of disk access.

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-369759.html

[ka9qlq]

Re: Why is my hard drive going nuts?

Thanks, using the info I traced it to MythTV. I uninstalled it and everything is quiet.

[Guest]

Re: Why is my hard drive going nuts?

Hi. I'm having the same problem here, a runaway kjournald going berserk on my hard drive. I've been looking all over for a solution. I skimmed briefly through the linked documents and was wondering what information you used to decide mythtv was the culprit? I'm removing it right now to see if it helps and it quite literally INSTANTLY worked.
So this is my problem and that is the fix.... but why?
I kind of enjoy mythtv.

[lingenfr]

Re: Why is my hard drive going nuts?

I have the same problem. I suppose that I will post over on the mythbuntu forum and see if there is any further help. I use mythtv and don't want to remove it. I will if I can't fix this. Thanks.

[jankushka]

Re: Why is my hard drive going nuts?

i recently installed ff3 beta.
when that was running, my hd would do funny things .
but killing ff3 would make things go back to normal.
didn't bother debugging the bloody thing, though.
hth