repost/sorry: continuous access to root disk (dsk0)

From: Henry Joy McCRACKEN <hjmcc_at_iap.fr>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 20:36:54 +0100 (MET)

[sorry about the repost, the last message had the wrong return address]

Dear Managers,

Apologies for the 'non-threatening' nature of this problem but it is
annoying one nonetheless. In any case if I may pose this ill-posed
problem:

We recently upgraded an XP1000 from Tru-64 4.0F to 5.1 rev 732. The
system has 512MB of ram and 3gig of swap. The upgrade went
fine. However, since the upgrade there is now persistent very small
disk activity on the root file system (dsk0). I include at the end of
this mail some output from iostat which were collected in the dead of
night when the system was idle; it is around 8/16 bps every five
seconds. I would like to know what it is!

This activity starts immediately after the system comes into multi-user
mode; you don't see it in single user mode. We didn't see it under
4.0F. It is still going almost a week after the machine was last
rebooted. Tests have been made when the system is idle (no console
users) 'top' reports no active processes; if you do a diff of the
output of lsof between times when the disk is being accessed and when
the disk is not being accessed nothing shows. Furthermore, there are no
files on / or /usr which are being updated regularly (save the stuff in
/proc); no errorlog files are growing uncontrollably! vmstat shows no
paging or swapping (there is a swap partition on this disk). I have
also tried stopping all non-essential services to see if it goes away
(like nfsd) but it doesn't.

Has anyone seen this behaviour? I include also a ps listing if that
might help. I suspect there is something in the kernel I don't know
about that is causing this.

many thanks in advance,

henry mccracken
LAS, Marseille

    tty dsk0 dsk1 cpu
 tin tout bps tps bps tps us ni sy id
   0 52 0 0 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 0 0 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 0 0 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 0 0 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 8 1 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 8 1 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 8 1 0 0 0 0 1 99
   0 52 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 99
   0 52 0 0 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 0 0 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 0 0 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 16 2 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 8 1 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 0 0 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 0 0 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 153 0 0 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 16 2 0 0 0 0 0100
   0 52 8 1 0 0 0 0 0100
[and so on]

USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY S STARTED TIME COMMAND
root 0 0.2 5.0 651M 25M ?? R < Mar 09 01:19:55 [kernel idle]
root 163634 0.0 0.2 6.48M 888K ?? I 19:53:17 0:00.06 rpc.ttdbserverd
root 45533 0.0 0.2 7.27M 1.3M ?? I Mar 11 0:04.25 /usr/local/lib/xmcd/bin-OSF1-alpha/xmcd
root 7595 0.0 0.1 6.32M 536K ?? I Mar 10 0:00.04 /usr/bin/X11/dxconsole -geometry 1024x150-128-0 -daemon -nobuttons -verbose -notify -exitOnFail -nostdin -bg gray
root 7580 0.0 0.0 6.17M 0K ?? IW Mar 10 0:00.12 dtlogin <:0> -daemon
root 7579 0.0 5.9 43.1M 30M ?? S < Mar 10 40:16.86 /usr/bin/X11/X :0 -screen 1280x1024 -vclass0 TrueColor -I +e3bs +e3su -auth /var/dt/authdir/authfiles/A:0-aaakva
root 183963 0.0 0.5 4.07M 2.3M pts/12 R + 02:11:00 0:00.03 ps aruxw
root 183922 0.0 0.1 1.90M 320K ?? S 02:06:01 0:00.04 telnetd
root 183904 0.0 0.1 1.90M 320K ?? S 02:01:57 0:00.01 telnetd
root 749 0.0 0.0 472K 0K console IW + Mar 09 0:00.02 /usr/sbin/getty console console vt100
root 748 0.0 0.2 20.0M 1.3M ?? S Mar 09 0:05.52 /usr/sbin/smsd -d
root 714 0.0 0.4 8.52M 1.9M ?? S Mar 09 0:01.51 /usr/opt/java118/bin/../bin/alpha/native_threads/java -mx2m authentication/server/AuthenticationServer
root 661 0.0 0.1 4.59M 272K ?? I Mar 09 0:00.09 /usr/dt/bin/dtlogin -daemon
root 621 0.0 0.1 6.27M 488K ?? S Mar 09 5:25.40 /usr/bin/mmeserver -config /var/mme/system.ini
root 615 0.0 0.1 3.87M 376K ?? S Mar 09 0:02.04 sendmail: accept -bd -q15m -om 2
root 614 0.0 0.0 2.62M 240K ?? R Mar 09 0:50.87 /usr/local/ls3/ls3
root 610 0.0 0.0 2.52M 0K ?? IW Mar 09 0:00.02 /usr/lbin/lpd
root 577 0.0 0.0 3.83M 8K ?? I Mar 09 0:00.05 /usr/sbin/cron
root 572 0.0 0.0 1.95M 80K ?? I Mar 09 0:00.18 -child (inetd)
root 563 0.0 0.0 1.86M 0K ?? IW Mar 09 0:00.00 /usr/sbin/inetd
root 415 0.0 0.1 6.63M 736K ?? S Mar 09 0:00.70 /usr/sbin/prpasswdd
root 414 0.0 0.0 4.38M 88K ?? S Mar 09 0:00.11 /usr/sbin/prpasswdd
root 395 0.0 0.0 1.80M 8K ?? I Mar 09 0:00.02 /usr/sbin/nfsiod 7
root 392 0.0 0.0 1.84M 0K ?? I Mar 09 0:00.01 /usr/sbin/nfsd -t32 -u32
root 390 0.0 0.0 2.63M 192K ?? I Mar 09 0:00.03 /usr/sbin/mountd -i
root 384 0.0 0.0 1.11M 80K ?? I Mar 09 0:00.06 /usr/sbin/ypbind -s -S nisumr,sercom
root 376 0.0 0.0 2.36M 160K ?? I Mar 09 0:00.19 /usr/sbin/portmap
root 301 0.0 0.0 2.47M 168K ?? I Mar 09 0:00.32 /usr/sbin/binlogd
root 297 0.0 0.0 2.39M 192K ?? S Mar 09 0:00.17 /usr/sbin/syslogd -e
root 201 0.0 0.0 2.30M 192K ?? I Mar 09 0:00.13 /usr/sbin/evmchmgr -l /var/evm/adm/logfiles/evmchmgr.log
root 200 0.0 0.0 2.37M 216K ?? I Mar 09 0:00.24 /usr/sbin/evmlogger -o /var/run/evmlogger.info -l /var/evm/adm/logfiles/evmlogger.log
root 165 0.0 0.1 2.94M 528K ?? I Mar 09 0:02.10 /usr/sbin/evmd
root 51 0.0 0.0 1.74M 56K ?? S Mar 09 0:04.77 /sbin/update
root 41 0.0 0.0 2.54M 88K ?? S Mar 09 0:00.33 /sbin/hotswapd -f
root 40 0.0 0.1 1.20M 568K ?? I Mar 09 0:00.16 /sbin/kloadsrv -f
root 1 0.0 0.0 488K 32K ?? IL Mar 09 0:02.78 /sbin/init -a
Received on Thu Mar 15 2001 - 19:39:02 NZDT

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