[ILUG] disk write hunt

Brian Foster blf at utvinternet.ie
Wed Jan 21 06:11:42 GMT 2004


On Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:32:46 -0000
"Cian Cullinan" <Cian.Cullinan at medialabeurope.org> wrote:

> iostat tells me there is writing to the hard disk going on (that and the blinky led on the front of the computer). lsof shows me what files are open, and which have been opened for writting, but doesn't tell me which are currently being written to (it's a long list). Anyone know how I would track down what process is responsible for the writes, preferably not too labour intensive? 
> Cheers,
> Cian

  maybe poll with either `lsof -o' or `lsof -s' and
  watch which file(s) are open for writing and whose
  offset (-o) or size (-s) is "constantly" changing?

  might also be able to narrow it done by polling with
  `ps -e' and seeing which process is clocking up cpu
  time (even if it spends most of its time doing I/O,
  it still has to run to initiate the I/O, and ps(1)
  will spot that).

cheers!
    -blf-

p.s.  apologies if this e-mail looks weird or has
     other meta-problems; I am playing with a new
     MUA and am not all certain what will happen.
     ( and can I blame the MUA for any content
      errors in the above suggestions?  ;-)  )
--
``How many surrealists does it take to    |  Brian Foster      Montpellier,
  change a lightbulb?  Three.  One calms  |  blf at utvinternet.ie      France
  the warthog, and two fill the bathtub   |    Stop E$$o (ExxonMobile)!
  with brightly-coloured machine tools.'' |       http://www.stopesso.com



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