what tool to find what's writing to disk

[Jonathan Hudson]

Gary W. Swearingen wrote:
> My drive light is flashing semi-erratically about once a second.
> 
> Any good tool for finding the culprit?
> 
> No luck with "top".
> 
> I tried "find / -amin -3" (and mmin), but it outputs too much noise.
> 
> And "find /var/ -amin -3" shows nothing.
> 
> I'll probably try improving the "find" if nobody knows something better.
> 
> Thanks.
> 

as root:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/block_dump

Then monitor dmesg to see what processes are accessing the disk. When
done turn it off (echo 0 etc), as it fills the logs.

-jonathan