Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 10 Aug 2001 16:19:56 -0600
From:      Nate Williams <nate@yogotech.com>
To:        mikea <mikea@mikea.ath.cx>
Cc:        stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Strange I/O behavior
Message-ID:  <15220.24076.57998.200803@nomad.yogotech.com>
In-Reply-To: <20010809221453.A1165@mikea.ath.cx>
References:  <15218.65134.426946.295368@nomad.yogotech.com> <20010809221453.A1165@mikea.ath.cx>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> > I've got a dual-CPU box that's acting very strangely.  At various times
> > throughout the day, the box starts to crawl.
> > 
> > In analyzing it, the only thing that jumps out at me is that the first
> > fixed disk is running a huge number of I/O transactions, to the point
> > that it's almost saturating the disk.
> > 
> > However, the amount transferred is almost nil, but since this disk
> > contains / and /usr (which means all the files are on it), interactive
> > performance goes to the dump during these sessions.
> > 
> > The box is an all SCSI system, with the first disk being a 17GB
> > Seagate.  The dmesg is below.
> > 
> > Here's the output of iostat 2, which shows alot of transactions going
> > on.  However, there are no active users doing anything as far as I can
> > see, and top shows the system as being mostly idle.
> > 
> > Any ideas how I can determine which application(s) are causing the huge
> > I/O loads?
> 
> Try fstat and lsof to see what programs have what files open,
> for a start.

Nothing obvious.

> Is there _any_ chance you've been cracked and the
> cracker had a tool running that spawned a few zillion telnet
> sessions?

Not a chance.  The box isn't/has never been on the Internet, and was
just recently updated to 4.3-RELEASE.  (I know, 4.4-RELEASE is almost
out, but it's a production box>)

> The symptoms were one CPU 97% busy with a program I didn't
> recognize, and some hundreds of telnet sessions outbound.

Interestingly enough, it's an I/O only problem.  The CPU usage is barely
creeping about 0.1%.


Nate

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?15220.24076.57998.200803>