Using 'noatime', and other options inetcfstab, correctly Updated and SOLVED

iforone

iforone

Hi folks - TIme for an Update, and my results from what I've noticed. If you recall, I started this thread *mainly* because I was getting (seemingly unjustifiable ) too many small hard disk writes, at very frequent intervals (every 3-5 seconds) - it seemed like *something* was constantly updating itself.

Turns out that even after issuing the 'chattr' commands as listed above, to bothvar andtmp the issue did not go away - though it seemed at first to slow it down, and made those frequent writes smaller in size, and at perhaps slightly longer intervals....

So I did a little system inspection (suspecting some 'deamon' (or other www type crud) running in the background).

Turns out; the "Offender Culprits" are atleast 1 on these below , ....or some-any combination of all 4

~$ sudoetc-init.d-samba stop Stopping Samba daemons: nmbd smbd.

~$ sudoetc-init.d-atd stop Stopping deferred end scheduler: atd.

~$ sudoetc-init.d-apache stop Stopping web server: apache.

~$ sudoetc-init.d-nfs* stop Usage: nfs-common {startstoprestart}

this command above showing usage resulted in the issuing of;

~$ sudoetc-init.d-nfs-common stop Stopping NFS common utilities: statd.

I'm pretty sure - most of the frequent HD racket-noise stopped right after stopping Samba.... I issued those commands over 12 hours ago and I've been happily running (clanky and noise free) since :-).

This part of the saga can now be layed to rest - and while John-Paul and I discussed further topics concerning RAM usage, disk caching, buffers and 'vmstat' - and while I've been implementing and watching and deciphering some related stats over time - I'm not noticing anything out of the ordinary (in various vmstat (using various options) output).

So...over time, I'll notice if the system continues to get kludgy and like molbuttes again while using many open browsers, shells, etc, (I had orig. though maybe there was a connection between this and my prior 'noatime' issues, and I still don't know yet) -- but if so - I'll add more RAM and see what happens.

Oh - to finish up; Yes, I had setup this box as a FileServer as well as a Desktop, during the Debian 3.1r1 sarge install (2.6.8-2 Kernel) - but have not had a need to use those services that I've stopped inetc-init.d -- now, onto to find out how to make them stop at every startup...I have an idea of where to start looking.

Thanks again everyone: for all your help, guidance, and suggestions. Further comments are welcomed, if you like.

Regards