What's accessing my hard disc?
in [UK Linux]
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From: David Cowie on 24 Nov 2007 18:11 gkrellm tells me how busy my hard disk and CPU are. top tells me what's using my CPU time and memory. Are there any programs (GUI or command line) that will tell me which programs are reading from and writing to my disks? Every now and again the HD will burst into life, with nothing obvious showing on top, and I'd like to know what's going on. -- David Cowie Containment Failure + 35310:32
From: spike1 on 25 Nov 2007 05:39 David Cowie <me(a)privacy.net> did eloquently scribble: > gkrellm tells me how busy my hard disk and CPU are. > top tells me what's using my CPU time and memory. > Are there any programs (GUI or command line) that will tell me which > programs are reading from and writing to my disks? Every now and again > the HD will burst into life, with nothing obvious showing on top, and I'd > like to know what's going on. lsof (LiSt Open Files) It lists all processes holding file handles, all processes with open sockets and all processes with open (or listening) network connections. The bursting into life of the hard disk could just be the virtual memory routines in the kernel doing a little swapping. If processes lie idle for a time, they can by swapped out, freeing memory for more useful things like cache until they're needed. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | spike1(a)freenet.co.uk | Windows95 (noun): 32 bit extensions and a | | | graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit | |Andrew Halliwell BSc(hons)| operating system originally coded for a 4 bit | | in |microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that| | Computer Science | can't stand 1 bit of competition. | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Nix on 25 Nov 2007 10:36 On 25 Nov 2007, spike1(a)freenet.co.uk spake thusly: > David Cowie <me(a)privacy.net> did eloquently scribble: >> gkrellm tells me how busy my hard disk and CPU are. >> top tells me what's using my CPU time and memory. >> Are there any programs (GUI or command line) that will tell me which >> programs are reading from and writing to my disks? Every now and again >> the HD will burst into life, with nothing obvious showing on top, and I'd >> like to know what's going on. > > lsof > (LiSt Open Files) > It lists all processes holding file handles, all processes with open sockets > and all processes with open (or listening) network connections. This does not cover all entities which can write to the disk. A majority of my drive writes are journal updates, writes over NFS, and md-thread-initiated superblock updates. (atime updates are also not coverd but if you care about performance you won't have many of those.) You want the blktrace package (you might need to recompile the kernel and enable CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IO_TRACE). -- `Some people don't think performance issues are "real bugs", and I think such people shouldn't be allowed to program.' --- Linus Torvalds
From: David Cowie on 25 Nov 2007 17:26 On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 10:39:55 +0000, spike1 wrote: > lsof > (LiSt Open Files) > It lists all processes holding file handles, all processes with open > sockets and all processes with open (or listening) network connections. Piping lsof into less reveals a report of over 4000 lines. That's a bit more detail than I was looking for. -- David Cowie Containment Failure + 35333:51
From: spike1 on 25 Nov 2007 17:39
David Cowie <me(a)privacy.net> did eloquently scribble: > On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 10:39:55 +0000, spike1 wrote: >> lsof >> (LiSt Open Files) >> It lists all processes holding file handles, all processes with open >> sockets and all processes with open (or listening) network connections. > Piping lsof into less reveals a report of over 4000 lines. That's a bit > more detail than I was looking for. well, you can pipe through grep to exclude stuff you don't want. ridcully:~ # lsof | wc -l 2154 ridcully:~ # lsof | grep DIR | wc -l 181 -- ______________________________________________________________________________ | spike1(a)freenet.co.uk | "Are you pondering what I'm pondering Pinky?" | |Andrew Halliwell BSc(hons)| | | in | "I think so brain, but this time, you control | | Computer Science | the Encounter suit, and I'll do the voice..." | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |