Re: which process is accessing my hard drive?
On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 12:43:24PM -0500, Matt Price wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 10:27:41AM -0700, s. keeling wrote:
> > Incoming from Matt Price:
> > >
> > > 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.
> >
> > I may not have your solution, but a couple of points:
> >
> > - kswapd, bdflush, klogd _may_ be your problem.
> >
kswapd and bdflush you need, and they are kernel processes. The problem
is that bdflush runs about every 30 seconds to flush buffers to
disk. Look into laptop-mode like I mentioned in the other email.
stopping klogd is a problem unless you know what you are doing, but you
should add a '-' in front of all log files in /etc/syslog.conf such as
for example:
kern.* -/var/log/kern.log
This will delay writing to the log files.
> if so, what should I do? They have such low process numbers I've
> always thought they were all absolutely essential. Can I mess with
> them?
>
> > - do you really want portmap, inetd, xfs, and sshd running on a laptop?!?
> >
>
> > I can see inetd (my exim seems to need it), but if you never ssh
> > _into_ that box, you don't need sshd. You don't need portmap except
> > if you're connecting to NFS, and xfs seems a waste of resources on a
> > small box except if you're running apps that demand its abilities.
>
> I actually DO ssh into the laptop sometimes -- not often, but
> sometimes when transfering data I want to work excluseively on my
> desktop... but I ought to be able to turn it off without any problem,
> I'll do that.
>
sshd doesn't do any disk access when there are no active connections
afaik.
> I don't really know what xfs is for -- occasionally I do work in a gui
> on Openoffice -- since fonts were so hard to set up I'm loathe to mess
> with them, but if in fact xfs is always unnecessary I'll just get rid
> of it. I just checked and the only other package apt wants to remove
> with it is x-window-system. Do you think that makes it safe to remove
> it?
It is basically safe to remove as X can serve its own fonts locally, xfs
is needed if you want to serve fonts remotely (rarely needed anymore).
You just need to make sure all the fontpath lines are setup properly in
/etc/X11/XF86Config-4
>
> Portmap I'll get rid of right now.
>
> well, that's a start -- thanks!
>
> matt
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-laptop-request@lists.debian.org
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
>
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System
> at the Tel-Aviv University CC.
>
Reply to: