100% disk utilization on /boot partition!

[Freethought]

I noticed that there was a lag on this linux machine, but the load is pretty low. There is plenty of memory and idle cpu, but look at the iostat results:

Device: rrqm/s wrqm/s rsec/s  wsec/s rkB/s wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz await svctm  %util
hda       0.00   0.00   0.00    0.00  0.00  0.00     0.00     0.00  0.00  0.00   0.00
hda1      0.00   0.00   0.00    0.00  0.00  0.00     0.00     1.00  0.00  0.00 100.05
hda2      0.00   0.00   0.00    0.00  0.00  0.00     0.00     0.00  0.00  0.00   0.00
dm-0      0.00   0.00   0.00    0.00  0.00  0.00     0.00     0.00  0.00  0.00   0.00
dm-1      0.00   0.00   0.00    0.00  0.00  0.00     0.00     0.00  0.00  0.00   0.00

Here's the 'df -h' result:

Filesystem                        Size  Used Avail Use%  Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00   457G   62G  372G  15%  /
/dev/hda1                          99M   32M   62M  35%  /boot
none                              7.9G    0   7.9G   0%  /dev/shm

and Here's the top result:

load average: 0.22, 0.25, 0.19
Tasks: 380 total,   1 running, 378 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
Cpu0  :  0.0% us,  0.3% sy,  0.0% ni, 99.7% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Cpu1  :  0.3% us,  0.3% sy,  0.0% ni, 98.0% id,  1.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.3% si
Cpu2  :  0.0% us,  0.0% sy,  0.0% ni, 99.7% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.3% si
Cpu3  :  1.0% us,  0.3% sy,  0.0% ni, 98.7% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:  16437828k total, 12905212k used,  3532616k free,   117612k buffers
Swap: 10420208k total,        0k used, 10420208k free,  9830312k cached

running 'lsof /boot' returns nothing. any idea what's causing this, might it be that the disk has bad sectors?

[jayd512]

Hi and Welcome!

Your top output indicates a zombie process, which could be part of the problem.
Look at the output of ps -ax, and try killing that process.
However, to my knowledge, if it has a PID of 0 or 1 you won't be able to kill it. Rebooting will be the only option.

[Freethought]

rebooting the machine fixed the lag, but /boot disk utilization remains at around 100% ... could this be normal?!

[jayd512]

It's not normal.
You will want to look at all running processes, and perhaps all incoming/outgoing network connections.
Also, take a look at your system logs to see what files are being accessed/utilized in your /boot partition.

[Freethought]

Sorry for the late reply Jay, since the reboot fixed the lag I figured I could ignore this problem for now; but the lag is back. Here's something I found the the log messages:


Aug 30 09:21:14 localhost kernel: sge_schedd[15804]: segfault at 0000000000000000 rip 0000003773972ad3 rsp 0000007fbffff300 error 4


Also this message keeps repeating:


Aug 30 08:52:37 localhost kdesktop_lock: 19583
Aug 30 08:55:05 localhost kdesktop_lock: 19583
Aug 30 08:56:14 localhost kdesktop_lock: 19583
Aug 30 08:57:37 localhost kdesktop_lock: 19583

any idea what's causing this?

[jayd512]

Not offhand.
Looking through some Google results on kdesktop_lock gives a little info on something called kcheckpass. although they seem to be a little dated.
But I've never been a KDE user, so I don't have any first-hand info on it.