From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Nov 25 20:57:36 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 640DE106566C for ; Thu, 25 Nov 2010 20:57:36 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jdc@koitsu.dyndns.org) Received: from qmta08.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net (qmta08.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net [76.96.62.80]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0C2C68FC08 for ; Thu, 25 Nov 2010 20:57:35 +0000 (UTC) Received: from omta05.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net ([76.96.62.43]) by qmta08.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net with comcast id bYwC1f0010vyq2s58YxcTz; Thu, 25 Nov 2010 20:57:36 +0000 Received: from koitsu.dyndns.org ([98.248.41.155]) by omta05.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net with comcast id bYxa1f0093LrwQ23RYxbii; Thu, 25 Nov 2010 20:57:36 +0000 Received: by icarus.home.lan (Postfix, from userid 1000) id A444A9B422; Thu, 25 Nov 2010 12:57:33 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 12:57:33 -0800 From: Jeremy Chadwick To: Adam Vande More Message-ID: <20101125205733.GA56845@icarus.home.lan> References: <4CEE88D9.4070200@DataIX.net> <20101125200813.GA56066@icarus.home.lan> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Andriy Gapon Subject: Re: top io mode X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 20:57:36 -0000 On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 02:28:35PM -0600, Adam Vande More wrote: > On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 2:08 PM, Jeremy Chadwick > wrote: > > > > Well the top bug didn't seem to resolve my actual issue and yes it it a > > > complete ZFS system. Problem is that the HD activity indicator light is > > > constantly flickering even though should be minimal activity. top still > > > shows no activity around the blinks, and there's no swapping happening > > > although gstat does seem to roughly match the blinks. I can't tell what > > > your patch does, would it enable me to see what's touching the disk? > > > > Please try using gstat(8) instead. > > > > Like I said gstat shows activity, but I have no way find what process is > causing the activity unless there is some hidden gstat option I'm unaware > of. Sorry, I missed that part of your explanation, my apologies. > to be more clear, if I have top -m io in one terminal, I see no movement in > the READ/WRITE columns. > > while polling gstat output I captured an IO "spike" > > http://pastebin.com/f84nuzxt > > the percent busy is at 0.00 for every entry with the exception of these > spikes. I don't have an answer for you, other than "maybe top shows a different 'kind' of I/O than what gstat or iostat does". Only ideas I have: 1) Possibly acct(2) with sa(8) could provide some insight, but I have no idea how well it works. 2) I see some ps(8) -O parameters labelled "inblk" and "oublk", but I'm not sure what "block" means given the man page context. If these are "disk blocks", then possibly a shell script that repetitively calls ps with these arguments could narrow it down. It's too bad, since sar(1M) on Solaris can be used to achieve exactly what you're looking for -- and the closest thing to that on FreeBSD that I know of is acct(2) and sa(8). -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc@parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |