On Tue, 14 Dec 1999, T. Tilton wrote about, disk access frenzy:
> Hello all,
>
> I have a problem that I haven't seen mentioned here on linux-newbie or
> on any of the other lists so I am at a loss as to where to start to
> try and solve it. OK to the point.
>
> On any one day at any one time my system will go off on a disk
> access frenzy. It consumes all the CPU time and everything just
> comes to a stand still. I once sat around for an hour and thirty
> minutes and monitored this occurrence. At about every 6 minutes
> the drive accesses would lighten up enough that the clock display would
> update, the pointer would move (if the mouse had been moved),
> and maybe a screen would partially refresh but then the access frenzy
> would increase and everything else would go into a coma until the next
> 6 or so minute interval (the intervals are not always at 6 minutes.
> this morning they were around 4 minutes.) I have gone away for hours
> with this happening and come back to it still going.
At anyone point at anytime, so it cant be "updatedb" trying to do its work,
that would make the system slow to say the l;east, but certanly not taking
over the system for 6 minutes at a time.
> One thing that seems to be common to this is that I have left Netscape
> running for a long period of time without a modem connection
> established to my ISP (i.e. overnight or during the day.) I can not
> remember a time when Netscape was not left running and this problem
> occurred.
'killall netscape'
Netscape is a wonderfull memory user, it will claim just about every byte
it can get its hands on, i'll bet you even have multiple communicator
windows open all at the same time and some of which have java scripts in
them, all sitting on your memory.
When it happens again run the program called top, you have plenty of time
for it to startup 90 minutes ;-)
That will show whats eating at your memory.
>
> I am running with: Debian 2.1 kernel 2.0.36
> Netscape Communicator version 4.7
> AfterStep1.7.142 patch level 17 window manager
> XFree86 3.3.2.3a-11
>
> So, if anyone has any idea or thoughts on this I would certainly
> appreciate you sharing them with me.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tracy Tilton
--
Regards Richard
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/
Merry Xmas.
