[TAG] Disk activity every 5s - but what's doing it?

[sdalley]

On Wed, 2005-12-07 at 14:33 -0800, Rick Moen wrote: 
> Quoting Thomas Adam (thomas at edulinux.homeunix.org):
> 
> > I suspect you're using EXT3 -- the default commit time of the journal
> > is every five seconds.  Indeed, you can use the tune2fs(8), or add a
> > value to your /etc/fstab options field such that you use:
> 
I'm using reiserfs v3.6 actually for everything except /boot. It ignores
the commit=20 option as far as I can see. The mount(8) manpage does not
list this option as valid for reiserfs.

But this "noatime" (do not update file entry with time of last access -
only time of last modify) mount option is worth a look - I should have
thought of that. (Tries adding noatime to mount options
for / /usr/local /home /var) Hmm, that shuts up the dripping tap -
great. But who's to tell what programs actually rely on atimes being
recorded on some dodgy file in /var say to do their stuff? We still need
a general-purpose disk access request logging tool.

> Concur.  The other thing Simon's going to want to know about is "Laptop
> Mode" and the Laptop Mode Tools.   Bart Samwel has written extensively
> about this:  http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsamwel/laptop_mode/
> 
Well, this is a desktop system. But let's do apt-get install
laptop-mode-tools anyway. Coo, a few seconds after installation, down
powers the harddisks! Seems to have an excessively short timeout though
- only a few seconds. Typing this mail in evolution goes by fits and
starts as the disk powers up and down.

Will post this and go away to bone up a bit more on laptop-mode-tools in
case TAG has anything to add at this stage.

Regards,

Simon D