Some time ago I installed (windows dual-boot) Leap 15.6.
At Leap recently I noticed a low short hum, periodically abt. 1/s.
As it corresponds with the access lamp at PC front flashing,
it will be the HD.
Running Window (the dual-boot) there is a HD access too,
but much less often, irregulary, and “lighter” (without hum),
say average abt. 0.3/s, with longer non-access times in-between.
I wonder what kind of process is regulary essential accessing the HD.
The HD consists of two partitions:
a non-mounted NTFS data partition for windows,
an ext4 partition for /home exclusively.
Which process does regulary access to /home?
(To my assessment that shouldn’t be necessary at all).
I just began with openSUSE, and there is still very few and
“unsuspicious” data at /home.
As I’m using a silent PC hardware (passively cooled)
where the only moving hardware is the data HD (system and swap is at SSD),
the periodic hum is quite enerving.
How can I find out (and hopefully stop the access)?
Well, assuming that your system is used by at least one user for at least some time when it is up and running, I assume that that user is accessing files in his home directory (and thus in the /home file system). Not so strange in my opinion.
I will see if I find an answer there…
Actually I thought here would be good place to ask,
as my Leap is just about fresh, and so the effect will be for everyone
with this tyical constelllation.
Cyclic HDD/SSD access is a common part of an OS. You can use countless tools to analyze which process accesses an drive at a moment. For this the google search…
Yes, thankyou.
But as I’m a beginner for it’s not so easy to assess what to use.
(If I wouldn’t be a starter… I wouldn’t have to ask).
For example I just tried iotop but the installation doesn’t work…
For me that is not so sure. When one is logged in in a desktop environment, a lot of processes will run even if the user does not start any program on purpose.
Sooooooo very true!! We use KDE Plasma on all our machines (obviously not the OP of this thread) … and the “baloo” file indexing and file search framework has been NOTORIOUS for running when it wants and it absolutely steals lots of IO, both memory and drive access to /home.
Because of that, we have disabled baloo on all our machines.
As I already mentioned, I just started with openSuSe (again, after 30 y of windows).
So please don’t expect me to give a priori all the information that a prof would know about.
(If I wouldn’t know better, I would think the answers are to frighten me off openSuSe).
I guess (by the last answer) that “DE” means desktop environment…?
And - well - I installed KDE Plasma.
Baloo I know from the jungle book…
BTW I’m not talking about “heavy” disk access, but periodically short touches.
Strange enough after 2 days of “HD touching” it just stopped shortly ago.
(Probably there is a connection with my installation of KDevelop etc.
Although there were only few files generated at the HDD, /home/projects)
Baloo (“File Search”) is activated with me, but it now shows no activity.
Next time the touching starts I will have a look at it again,
and won’t forget to post the result, and hopefully mark @aggie’s post as solution.
That’s because Baloo doesn’t run all the time. It runs periodically to update its index databases.
Baloo’s main purpose is to provide “file search” results faster. Unless you’ve got hundreds of thousands of files in your /home, then personally (an opinion from experience), the [supposedly faster] results it provides will not be noticeable. For example, if you use Dolphin’s search facility to find a file, it will ask Baloo for the results. Is one second (or less) quicker important?
We disabled Baloo on all our machines many months ago because of the havoc it caused - if you search in these forums, you will find numerous posts about it stealing CPU time and massive disk reads. During that fiasco, you could hardly use your machine while Baloo was running.
While it’s certainly true that it could be a file indexer, there are also going to be accesses that are not obvious.
For example, applications sometimes create temporary files - and not in places where you’d expect (ie, /tmp).
Desktop tools read and write config files that are stored in user home directories. There is a lot of configuration information that is stored there.
Web browsers typically have their cache in the user home directory.
Just because you aren’t opening or closing a file actively doesn’t mean the system isn’t doing anything. Linux (and Windows) are multitasking operating systems, and they run multiple concurrent processes even when there’s just a single user (in fact, even when no users are logged in).
It would be nice, if baloo would be the culprit with me too,
but I fear my symptoms don’t match to it:
I didn’t have intensive HD access, but only periodic short access.
Moreover there are only few dozens of files at the ext4 partition, /home.
Baloo must have been implemented very bad if it checks them at 2 days
for every second over and over again.
No, I fear the “culprit” will be some device handling system process.
Strange that it ran for 2 days. (Probably) not before and not now.
Finally I succeeded in installing iotop.
When the periodic access starts again, I will try that and post.
As my system is about fresh, I shouldn’t be the only one with that effect.
I didn’t start any desktop tools, applications or browsers or whatsoever.
But of course some may run “hidden”/ implicite.
I just started the system and didn’t do anything.
I don’t agree that what I am “seeing is perfectly normal”.
A 1s periodically access to a near empty HDD for a long time
is anything but normal (See my comparison to windows).
Also that it was “only” for 2 days and stopped then.
Something is not as it should be…
Next time it happens, iotop hopefully will tell more.
You should take into account that every installation and it’s usage is unique.
E.g. I would not take it for granted that people log in into the desktop and then do nothing for a long time. And when they do, they probably will not notice that there is some disk access from time to time. And when they notice, they probably do not care. That all can explain why nobody reported the same.
Again, when you are logged in in a KDE/Plasma desktop, there are already a bunch of processes running without the user doing anything.
I just did a test on a laptop with Leap 15.5. Booted it. Logged in as henk in KDE and waited until the desktop shows, no automatic started programs.
To console #1 and logged in as root . Did
Thus already 69 processes are running (amongst them a lot of akonadi related ones).
After a minute or two it was down to 66.
Things are running and things are happening. Even without baloo (which I also do not use).
Nevertheless, I will not discourage you to try and find out which process it is when you get the chance. Will be interesting to all of us.
