Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 25 Jun 2002 23:38:48 -0400 | From | Richard Gooch <> | Subject | Re: Inexplicable disk activity trying to load modules on devfs |
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Daniel Jacobowitz writes: > On Mon, Jun 17, 2002 at 10:59:26AM +0400, Borsenkow Andrej wrote: > > >> > > >> I just booted into 2.4.19-pre10-ac2 for the first time, and noticed > > >> something very odd: my disk activity light was flashing at about > > >> half-second intervals, very regularly, and I could hear the disk > > >> moving. I was only able to track it down to which disk controller, via > > >> /proc/interrupts (are there any tools for monitoring VFS activity? > > >> They'd be really useful). Eventually I hunted down the program causing > > >> it: xmms. > > >> > > >> The reason turned out to be that I hadn't remembered to build my sound > > >> driver for this kernel version. Every half-second xmms tried to open > > >> /dev/mixer (and failed, ENOENT). Every time it did that there was > > >> actual disk activity. Easily reproducible without xmms. Reproducible > > >> on any non-existant device in devfs, but not for nonexisting files on > > >> other filesystems. Is something bypassing the normal disk cache > > >> mechanisms here? That doesn't seem right at all. > > >> > > > > > > > > >syslog activity from a printk, perhaps? > > > > No. It is most probably devfsd trying to load sound modules. > > > > This is exactly the reason Mandrake does not enable devfs in kernel-secure. > > You can badly hit your system by doing in a loop ls /dev/foo for some device > > foo that is configured for module autoloading. > > > > It is very fascist decision; the slightly more forgiving way is to disable > > devfsd module autoloading (or disable devfsd entirely, just run it once > > after all drivers are loaded to execute actions) but then you lose support > > for hot plugging and some people do use kernel-secure on desktops. > > For the curious, the reason is that modprobe writes even failed > attempts to a log in /var/log/ksymoops, and calls fdatasync() on > that file afterwards. There is no way to disable this without > removing that directory, as a design decision. I don't personally > see the point in logging attempts which fail because there is no > driver...
Sounds like the behaviour of modprobe needs to be fixed.
Regards,
Richard.... Permanent: rgooch@atnf.csiro.au Current: rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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