Ubuntu :: System Becomes Almost Unusable During Disk Writes?
Apr 12, 2010
I'm using 9.10 Desktop 64bit on a Dell Latitude D830. I have 4 gigs of RAM and a 7200 rpm sata hard drive. Everything works pretty well, video, sound, and network. Flash isn't as smooth as in Windows but I assume that's a Flash/64bit thing and not necessarily an Ubuntu thing.
However, one area of performance still lags far behind my Windows XP experience, and that's disk writes. For instance, when I'm copying a large amount of information from a USB drive or from my Windows partition to my native partition, I can barely switch windows until the task is complete, nevermind trying to surf the Web. I thought that that might be related to the slow performance of the ntfs driver, but recently I have been doing a lot of work with VMWare, and I get the same result when trying to pause virtual machines - it writes a largish amount of information to disk in a short amount of time and I can't do much until it finishes.
Here are some things I looked at based on other threads to try to debug my issue:
~$ sudo hdparm /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
multcount = 8 (on)
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
[Code].....
That disk read speed is a little faster than average - several more tests showed it hovering around the 66 MB/sec range. Of the other info, I see that UDMA is on which I understand is good, but if there is something else there that I should fix I don't see it.
I know that my computer can handle these tasks (at least the vmware stuff) without such a significant interface slowdown because in XP I did it with less RAM than I have now. Is this just the way that the linux kernel scheduler fails to account for UI needs?
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Jul 2, 2010
We are graphing various system parameters using Cacti. One of our graphs shows hard drive reads and writes. A question came up: why do we need this graph?
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Jul 24, 2011
I run a website that a very steady flow of traffic and Im seeing recent issues that I just dont like. Server is 10.04.2 on a supermicro i7-950/6gb RAM with two 500gb Samsung F3 drives in a software RAID1 (1x5400, 1x7200) and for several weeks, its been running very well. Recently, Im seeing the server hang for 5-20 seconds. IOwait goes through the roof, nothing can write to the disk. Apache logs stop, redis fails to rebuild caches, mysql errors and then it continues and moves back to normal operation
/ is ext4, the kernel was 2.6.32-server-x64 but since updating to 2.6.38-server-x64, the issue has dropped from maybe once per 10 minutes to once per 15 minutes. 3 IOstat copy/pastes show this when it hangs.
Code:
Total DISK READ: 0.00 B/s | Total DISK WRITE: 0.00 B/s
TID PRIO USER DISK READ DISK WRITE SWAPIN IO> COMMAND
[code]...
No smart errors or smart diags show any issues with any of the disks and kernel.log shows near nothing other than a process hang, 120 seconds about 5 days ago.
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Jun 9, 2010
System spec:
Core 2 Quad, Q6600, 2.4GHz OC'd to 3GHz
Asus Rampage Formula m/b
2x WD RE2 500GB HDDs ("linux boot" and "winxp boot")
1x Seagate Barracuda HDD ("boneyard")
4GB DDR2-800 RAM
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
I'm having a really annoying problem with disc activity on my desktop system. Basically, if anything is writing a large amount of data to the hard drive (say, 10MB or over), the machine basically freezes solid. The mouse goes jittery (you move it and it takes a second then moves in one big leap).
For instance, if I try to image a USB hard drive to a file:
# dd if=/dev/sdh of=usbdrive_dump bs=1G
Effectively this works in two portions: it reads 1GB of data to RAM, then blats it out into a file. The machine is perfectly responsive while the USB drive is getting thrashed, but locks solid when the internal SATA drives are in use. Writing to USB HDDs doesn't seem to have the same effect -- I can copy 1GB files to/from them all day long and the machine is perfectly happy.
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Feb 27, 2011
My system decided to crash on me, hard. It was humming along happily for about 2 months and now doesn't boot. If I boot from hard-disk, I get grub. Launching the first kernel choice hangs. I thought maybe the install was corrupt, so I booted from usb install disk. The usb hdd didn't boot; something about an error trying to access /dev/sda . Unplugging the internal disk and plugging in the usb install disk does result in the system booting. Plugging in the internal disk in a running system usb-booted system does not result in the system detecting the disk.
How do I know if the disk is physically broken? This seems unlikely since it does manage to launch grub consistently. Or is this still possible? How can I try to mount whatever is left? The usb install disk doesn't even list the /dev/sd*. Any pointers on how to reformat the drive if it's not being mounted?
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Sep 29, 2010
After doing the standard sequence to go from 10.4 to 10.10 beta, the system is now unusable.There are no icons and no thees. The GDM login shows a big question mark where a graphics would normally be.When I log into the session, I get nothing: no desktop, no panels. Alt+F2 does nothing, so I can't even launch a terminal that way.After starting a terminal from a virtual console, I can start looking at what's wrong. Metacity crashes right awaywith:metacity:ERROR:ui/ui.c:752:meta_ui_get_default_window_icon: assertion failed: (default_icon)Aborted (core dumped)
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Aug 19, 2010
I had a working ubuntu 10 on my old laptop. Not sure what's happened but now whenever you start any app, the app starts in the foreground, then immediately the desktop gains the focus. This happens all the time on any app that is either already running or started from scratch. Thus making the system unusable.
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Jul 26, 2011
I formatted a 1.5 Tb western digital external usb drive to ext4 for media streaming on ubuntu-server. I tried FAT32/NTFS before but it keeps unmounting itself for no reason. I tried everything I could find on Google but no luck. After formatting it to ext4, it worked OK for a while but for some reason it has stopped working. Running mount -a makes system unusable indefinitely. It works only if I restart it.
UUID=db261dd6-2edf-4020-a0f5-17613a6e94ea /media/wd ext4 defaults 0 0
Is ext4 not a compatible format for external drive? Since, I have I tried different formats and Ubuntu keeps unmounting them. Should I try a different distro?
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Jun 26, 2010
I have a problem after running zypper up. Apparantly somehow it upgraded to current factory release.. Problems so farNo networkNo x - session(after a quick hack i have x started but no input devices work)I think there is something wrong with udev and my xorg.confx first complained about InputDevice not being recognised.. I moved away my /etc/X11/xorg.conf and got a quick running session (without input devices, so icannot log on) but after a reboot it gives me a "black" screenWhile troubleshooting is encountered the problem that my network card is not recognised.. This all points in the direction of udev or whatever to be badly configured during upgrade..
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Apr 13, 2011
I have Kubuntu 10.10 64-bit, which was running fine until I did a bunch of apt-get software installs to permit me to compile YaWP weather plasmoid. In the process I am now at KDE 4.6.2, and my system is now non-functional, not able to start KDE desktop.
When KDE starts I get continuous krunner segfaults, krunner is taking 100% of the CPU, the desktop is there but the system is unusable. /var/log/messages is filled with the krunner segfaults, each line further indicating "error 4 in libkio.so.5.6.0". I tried reinstalling kubuntu-desktop, problem remains.
I expect I have created some software incompatibility with my installs, but I do not know how to diagnose/resolve.
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Nov 19, 2010
I recently bought a second monitor and I had this set up perfectly fine with two panels on my primary display and one on my secondary. I've now gone away for the weekend (leaving the monitor) and I went to turn on my laptop and it didn't work.
When I login to a gnome session (or indeed a failsafe gnome session) I just got two horizontal white bars (where the panels would be). I switch to a terminal, login and run top and see that gnome-panel is on 100%. Running 'killall gnome-panel' does nothing (tried a few times).
I've had to install xfce4 just to type this message. Is there any way I can 'reset' gnome-panel or any other fix? Or even a workaround would be nice. I'm on 9.10 by the way. I am going to upgrade at some point but its not really an option yet.
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Aug 5, 2011
I am completely new to Linux in general, and have recently downloaded Fedora 15 KDE spin. I tried dual-booting between Windows 7 and Fedora by shrinking one of my Windows partitions (I have two, this partition not containing the Windows installation). I tried shrinking it to 30 GB less than the total space available on the partition, and after pressing continue, received an error (which I unfortunately dismissed quickly and can't remember). In the file manager, Fedora showed that my partition changed from 1.3Tb to 1.2 Tb, but I couldn't access it. Upon rebooting into Windows, I still can't access it, receiving a "format drive before use" popup and then error stating that it is possibly of a different filesystem or corrupt.
Unfortunately, I stupidly didn't backup any of my data (which I will be sure to remember to do in the future). I installed EASEUS Partition Master 8.0.1 Home Edition, which states that my drive is still of NTFS filesystem and has the total space it should. However, upon clicking "check drive," it states there are no errors and when trying to "explore files," it doesn't find any (yet it shows the correct amount of used and unused space). I then tried running TestDisk, but only allows me to check my media drive E, which is my dvd drive that has my Fedora Live CD in it (which cannot be ejected manually or through Windows, an error stating it cannot be ejected). I didn't go through with TestDisk for my DVD drive because I needed to verify the type of partition (which to my knowledge shouldn't even exist). It shows 700 something MiB / 600 something MiB. Although I have decent general knowledge about computers, I am a complete novice when it comes to doing something like this.
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Apr 9, 2010
This is the third 9.10 install to do this on two different laptops, so wondering what's up...
In both cases, the goal was to leave a large chunk of unpartitioned disk after the Ubuntu partitions, for a second OS install or a filesystem Ubuntu cannot create like NTFS.
When I install with manual partitions, the system can't boot and asks for me to insert a system disk and press any key. When I reinstall telling Ubuntu to "use the entire disk" it then works.
First laptop, first try:
Remainder of the 500GB disk is free space.
Fails to boot, "insert system disk".
First laptop, second try without the /boot partition:
Remainder of the 500GB disk is free space.
Fails to boot, "insert system disk".
"use entire disk" works perfectly.
Second laptop, first try:
Same thing, non-system disk or disk error, insert system disk.
Second try "use entire disk" is currently in progress but I expect the same to happen.
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Aug 1, 2010
I had done a new lucid install to a 1 TB RAID 1 array using the alternate CD a few weeks back. I messed up that system trying to some hardware working that lucid doesn't have drivers for yet, so I gave up on it and reinstalled to a single 80 GB disk that I now want to move over to the RAID array.
I moved all of the existing files on the array to a single folder, then copied all of the folders from the 80 GB disk over to the array with permissions and symlinks (minus the contents of /proc and /sys, which I created empty).
These are the commands I used:
Quote:
p -a -d -R -v -t /media/raid_array /b*
cp -a -d -R -v -t /media/raid_array /d*
cp -a -d -R -v -t /media/raid_array /e*
cp -a -d -R -v -t /media/raid_array /h*
[Code]....
I tried to change fstab to use the 689a... for root, but when I try to boot, it's still trying to open /dev/disk/by-uuid/412d...
So then I booted from the single disk again and chrooted into the array, then ran update-initramfs -u. I got 3 "grep: /proc/modules: No such file or directory" errors, and "cat: /proc/cmdline: No such file or directory"- so I created directory /proc/modules, created an empty file /proc/cmdline, and ran the initramfs update again. Then I tried to shut down, which hung (probably because I was doing all of this from a terminal window in Gnome), so I killed the power after a couple of minutes.
It's still trying to use /dev/disk/by-uuid/412d... to boot.
What am I missing? I assume I just have to change the UUID to mount as root, but I don't know how.
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Apr 29, 2011
Is it possible to install GRUB in the MBR of the only bootable disk in the system, but load configuration and images from another disk?Basically I want to install GRUB on /dev/sda, but menu and images will be under /dev/sdb2.Note: /dev/sdb is not bootable.
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Jan 22, 2011
After installation of debian, using the squeeze net-installer, on a HP elitebook 6930P, i get the following error. "non-system disk or disk error"
It is right after boot process, and just when it should load grub. Grub is installed in the MBR. Windows7, is installed as well, and is not an option to remove. (Should not be the problem though).
/ is set with the bootable flag.
The installation went without any issues, and I have actually tried to install twice with the exact same thing.
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Jan 2, 2010
My dual proc, dual core Opteron MSI Master2FAR motherboard failed, and I try to boot a disk, used on this board as boot disk, on an Intel based Gigabyte GA-965-DS3. Both systems are x86_64 architecture.
The OS is on both systems is openSUSE 11.1.
On booting the disk on the Gigabyte, the disk is seen correctly by the BIOS, but not by the OS, and there is no /dev/sdX; no /dev/disk/... either. I am taken to a login shell from the ramdisk.
When I just mount this disk on the Gigabyte (booted with the Gigabyte's original boot disk) everything seems fine. No suprise to me, since the disk was fine, and was unmounted gracefully and physically taken off the MSI before the board failed.
I think that the cause lies in the fact that the harddisk controller on the Gigabyte is different from the MSI, and the driver for that controller is not available at boot time.
I have two questions:
- is my assumption correct, or is something else going on?
- if I am right, is there a way to get this disk booting on the Gigabyte (or on another system, for that matter)?
You might want to ask why I want to boot this disk on the Gigabyte in the first place, since I can mount it and see all data on it. I have a reason for that, but telling that story would make this topic too long, and it's too off-topic. Most certainly I will get to that in another topic.
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Oct 17, 2010
I have windows and linux distros on my /dev/sda. I tried to install fedora 13, but after reboot I cannot boot up to any of installed systems. I'm getting: Non-System disk or disk errorreplace and striky any key when readyWhen I use ubuntu 10, boot from first hard disk, I'm able to get GNU GRUB version 1.98...nd boot up to any system. but without ubuntu in a cd-rom I'm getting this error.I tried: grub-install /dev/sdX in one of my installed linux distros, but without any success.
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Jan 1, 2010
Hibernating windows 7 on dual-boot laptop (9.10 Ubuntu - W7) writes something on MBR which breaks GRUB2. GRUB2 does not load at all after hibernating W7 and the best solution is to reinstall GRUB with Ubuntu 9.10 cd, just follow the instructions at [URL]
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Apr 23, 2010
In RC 10.4 abcde still writes no tags. Sadly, I should say, since I've always used abcde for ripping CDs.
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Jun 7, 2011
I'm seeing sustained disk writes of about 2 MB/s in the indicator-multiload indicator in Unity. I determined that it is writes on my 500GB HDD on /dev/sdb. This behaviour started after I used Gparted to create a single 500GB ext4 partition and also selected that it should be formatted to ext4 in Gparted.
Is this usual? It also survived a reboot.. I assume that it is the full formatting taking place in the background?
I saw no activity using pidstat or iotop. Only using vmstat -d revealed the writes.
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Oct 28, 2010
Booted up system and it stated please insert system disk press any key.So it sounds like my startup got corrupted? I running centos 4.5 on it (old yes) Is there a repair I can perform by a disk? Would it matter if I chose i386 or x86? I cant remeber which version was installed on it.
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Feb 1, 2010
where to writes the commands if i am using fadora 11?
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Mar 6, 2010
GNU/Linux kernel 2.6
MS Windows XP 5.1 (Service Pack 3)
I want to install windows XP but every time I do so I need several days to get linux running again. In linux I use lilo (don't remember the version no.), which I am familiarized with.how to fix the linux partition after I install xp
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Oct 23, 2010
Read/writes are slow on NFS.How can we diagnosing the issue, what commands are used for the error finding
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Feb 14, 2010
Does Linux have a way to trace writes to a file?
For each write, I would like to know the time, date, process id, user, file position, byte count, and the data written.
I could use this with a script to replay the writes to a backup of the original file, and reproduce the file contents as they were at a point in time.
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Jul 1, 2010
I have a fileserver running 10.04 server 64bit and samba. I connect it to my desktop which is 10.04 desktop 64bit.I have the server mounted on my desktop in fstab as://10.0.0.2/share /media/share cifs guest, uid= 1000.Up until 30 June 2010 it was all fine. Now when I write the server it is very slow e.g. 2Mbps though when I read I get >100Mbps so I think my network is still ok. If i use nautilus smb://10.0.0.2/share I can write at >100Mbps and also read at >100Mbps...So any ideas why the write speed via the fstab mount samba has started to go really slowly in the last couple of days?
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Aug 30, 2010
I have two ntfs partitions I use to store music and data. I've been using them in all my linux boxes without any problems. Simply use Ntfs-3g with noatime and everything works great.
However, since the update to OpenSuse 11.3 writing to my NTFS partitions takes FOREVER. I've specified noatime, relatime and norelatime successively without success. The partitions have plenty of space and are defragmented.
When copying large files, It starts fast at first, but in the last hundred MB it slows down to about 1.5MB/s. Even after the transfer is supposedly done, the HD led remains on and all other read/write activity involving the partition is completely halted.
This can take between 5 minutes to 10 or more depending on the size of the file. When copying several small files, (100 MB or less) it starts at about 1.5MB/s from the beginning.
I have the latest versions of fuse and ntfs-3g installed
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Jun 20, 2011
Is there a way under linux to find out directory with frequent writes and/or deletes?
I'm using Ubuntu and recently bought SSD. I moved /tmp to ramdisk and did some other tweaks to avoid wear. But I was wondering if there's a way to pinpoint hotspots in filesystem where files are often written. For example webserver's log directory with many appends every minute or user's download directory where he downloads gigabytes of stuff only to be moved elsewhere soon after finishing.
I came across inotify which could probably do the trick but it seems it'd require lot of scripting which I'm not very familiar with
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Mar 8, 2011
I hav Debian Sqeeze, and not knowing what I did, it suddenly starts to consider all pressing of e key as 0128. Also some other key, which I don't know currently. I use different layout, however it happens on others too.
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