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Re: which process is accessing my hard drive?



On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 11:35:55AM -0500, Matt Price wrote:
> 
> Hey folks,
> 
> I'm trying to set my (aging) laptop up for maximum power
> efficiency.  using hdparm, I set the spindown time very short, I don't
> use x, and I've gone so far as to shutdown things like cron and atd.
> Pretty much the only thing I have running is emacs (see the output of
> ps, attached).  But somehow the hard drive keeps spinning back up
> spontaneously.  Who's accessing my hard drive??  I don't have the
> slightest idea how to find out, or (even better) figure out how to
> stop it from happening.  
> 
> Can anyone help me with this?
> 

You should look into laptop mode (what kernel are you using?,
2.4.23-pre5 or there abouts and up has it built in). If you have a
kernel that has laptop mode you can do echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/block_dump
and it will print which processes access the disk.

Also, I am having a problem with emacs now that it keeps saving backups
every 30 seconds or so. Using flyspell in emacs will also keep
accessing the disk when it checks the dictionary for spelling.

> thx,
> matt
> 
>  
>  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System
>  at the Tel-Aviv University CC.
Content-Description: output of ps
> USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
> root         1  0.0  0.4  1484  444 ?        S    01:27   0:03 init
> root         2  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   01:27   0:02 [keventd]
> root         3  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SWN  01:27   0:00 [ksoftirqd_CPU0]
> root         4  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   01:27   0:01 [kswapd]
> root         5  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   01:27   0:00 [bdflush]
> root         6  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        TW   01:27   0:00 [kupdated]
> root         7  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   01:27   0:01 [khubd]
> daemon     165  0.0  0.3  1600  304 ?        S    01:27   0:00 /sbin/portmap
> root       254  0.0  0.6  2184  580 ?        S    01:27   0:00 /sbin/syslogd
> root       257  0.0  0.5  2200  492 ?        S    01:27   0:00 /sbin/klogd
> root       270  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   01:27   0:00 [kapmd]
> root       272  0.0  0.5  1484  540 ?        S    01:27   0:04 /usr/sbin/apmd -P /etc/apm/apmd_proxy --proxy-timeout 30
> root       297  0.0  0.4  2164  452 ?        S    01:27   0:00 /usr/sbin/inetd
> root       335  0.0  0.5  1500  556 ?        S    01:27   0:00 /sbin/cardmgr -C config-2.4
> root       362  0.0  0.5  3040  544 ?        S    01:28   0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
> root       374  0.0  0.7  4268  732 ?        S    01:28   0:00 /usr/bin/X11/xfs -daemon
> root       438  0.0  0.6  4444  572 ?        S    01:28   0:00 /usr/X11R6/bin/Xprt -ac -pn -nolisten tcp -audit 4 -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc :64
> root       450  0.0  0.5  2304  532 ?        S    01:28   0:00 /sbin/rpc.statd
> root       454  0.0  0.5  1528  528 ?        S    01:28   0:00 /usr/sbin/noflushd -n 5 /dev/hda
> matt       469  0.0  1.5  3436 1440 tty1     S    01:28   0:02 -bash
> root       470  0.0  1.4  3424 1404 tty2     S    01:28   0:01 -bash
> root       472  0.0  0.4  1480  404 tty4     S    01:28   0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty4
> root       473  0.0  0.4  1480  404 tty5     S    01:28   0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty5
> root       474  0.0  0.4  1480  404 tty6     S    01:28   0:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty6
> matt      5749  0.0  1.9  3444 1788 tty3     S    03:29   0:00 -bash
> matt      6161  0.2  7.1 10784 6768 tty1     T    04:09   1:04 emacs Strassbourg.ll
> matt      7322  0.0  0.8  2848  824 tty1     R    11:31   0:00 ps aux



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