what tool to find what's writing to disk

[Darryl Clarke]

On 4/15/06, Gary W. Swearingen <garys at opusnet.com> wrote:
> Jonathan Hudson <jh+ubuntu at daria.co.uk> writes:
>
> >> echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/block_dump
> >
> > Forgot to say, you should turn syslogd off first, otherwise you end up
> > in a vicious spiral of logged disk activity.
>
> Thanks, but that's no prob for a couple of seconds.  (But seems
> strange that "they" set it up to log to 3 files.)
>
> It looks like "pdflush" is the culprit.  Seems to me a memory cleanup
> daemon.  I'll be suprised if that's designed-in behavior, but I'll do
> some Googling.

It's not a daemon, it's a part of the kernel.

It's activity is directly related to system usage.  It only hits your
disk if you use swap space.  The more swap used, the more it will hit
your disk.

--
~ Darryl  ~ smartssa at gmail.com
~ http://darrylclarke.com