find slows system down to a crawl

[MarkSyder]

Hi everybody,

I've just been running a find command on an HP-UX 11.00 system.

I had to abort the command because the users complained that the system had slowed down to a crawl. When I aborted the command the system started running at an acceptable rate again.

This is the only system I support where this has happened. Any ideas as to what may cause it? And even more important, how do I prevent it?

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[Anupam Anshu_1]

Could you please provide the command-line for find(1). I will try to reproduce the problem on 11.00 (also on other releases).

Regards,

Anshu

[Rajesh D L]

Hi Mark,

You are running find command from root, it seems. Try running it from different filesystems/directories separately.

regards,
RDL.

[Joseph Loo]

hi,

please reply with the options use for the find command and also:

# what /usr/bin/find
to check the patch level of the command

regards.

[Pete Randall]

Mark,

This is typical for find. In a Performance and Tuning class we used multiple find commands to choke the systems for demonstration purposes.

If you're using the -exec option, you may be able to improve things by instead piping to xargs, i.e.

find /tmp -mtime +2 |xargs rm

- rather than -

find /tmp -mtime +2 -exec rm {} \;



Pete

[KapilRaj]

I have the same problem on filesystems that has more than 4 Lacs files !

Change the housekeeping policies and tell the apps guys that filesystem is not a database !

Regds,

Kapil

[MarkSyder]

Full command:

find / -name (filename) -print

what /usr/bin/find:

$Revision: 82.3 $

Mark

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Any NFS involved?

If so, that is destiny :) You asked for it, you got it. Either (temporarily) unmount all NFS/AFS/DFS filesystems, or be sure to find only in the dir trees that do not include these type of FS's

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Anupam Anshu_1]

The latest version of find(1) on 11.00 is $Revision: 82.3.5.2. This available with PHCO_25641.

Moreover, in the command-line, give
find / -name
If you are giving some regular expressions in place of exact file name, then use double quotes. e.g.
find / -name "*file*".

Regards,

Anshu

[Mark Grant]

Mark, even the simple find you mention does have a large impact on resources. It is heavy on disk io. If the users already give the disks a good run for their money, "find" is only going to make it worse. It might be better to do small finds instead of big ones. I.e create a script that cd's to a known set of subdirectories and does a find in each one with a significant pause between each find command.

[Eric Antunes · Accepted solution]

Try this 2 solutions:

find / -fsonly hfs -print

and

find / ! -local -prune -o -print

[Cheryl Griffin]

Are you running a mix of find and grep? It may be that grep is the hold up. Add a -type to your find string to search for regular files only.

# find /opt -type f ....

[MarkSyder]

Hi everybody,

Some useful things to be going on with there.

Yes, it is searching an NFS mounted drive with a very large filesystem on it - I think we may be on to something here. It's a manufacturing server, so if I dismount the fs I won't get out of the building alive!

I like the look on Antunes' possible solutions though. I'll give them a try and award points where I haven't already done so in due course.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

Mark

[MarkSyder]

Thanks Antunes - the first of your solutions worked perfectly.

Mark

PS - any spare tickets for Euro 2004? ;-)

[Eric Antunes]

Hi Mark,

Unfortunatelly have I no tickets at all... :-(

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

If I had any, you could get them for free. I hate football.

F1 otoh ... Go Button, go!

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn [ driving a Honda ]

[Dani Seely]

Hey Mark,
You should use "nice" on such a command so that the system shares the resources rather than hogging them. Do "man nice" and check it out. Your command should look like:

# nice find / -name (filename) -print

This may take a bit longer to run because you are sharing the resources, but you won't have the system dropping to its knees.

[MarkSyder]

Antunes - good luck for Thursday. You'll need it with Wayne Rooney on this form! What a pity neither of us has a ticket :-(

Just in case any Chelsea supporters read this - he's not for sale! (I'm an Evertonian in case you hadn't guessed.)

Mark

[Eric Antunes]

Good like for you to Mark because that's F.C.Porto team that's playing undercovered with the Portuguese uniform! :-D

The Portuguese colors aren't green, red and yellow anymore: see the new Portuguese flag in attachment... ;-)

[MarkSyder]

Good luck in the semi-final :-( (although if you get the same referee you won't need luck).

I would have given you more points if that perfectly good goal had been allowed!

Mark

[Jonathan Kamminga]

It's not easy for a team of 11 to play against one of 12, especially when the 12th man is holding the whistle...

[Joseph Loo]

i got only one thing to say ....

the curse of the penalty kicks ... it happen in WC '90, EC '96 and it is happening again.

regards.

[MarkSyder]

See attached.

I know I started it, but could I politely suggest that we stop talking football now in case people are opening this thread thinking it's still about a unix problem? I don't want people complaining about me on the "issues" thread!

Of course, I have no objection to someone starting a new thread dedicated to football - as long as the title makes it clear so people who aren't interested can avoid it.

Mark

[Eric Antunes]

Hi Mark,

We had the same referee talk here in EC 2000 when we loose against France with a penalty due to Abel Xavier's hand...

I think the referees in this championship are doing a great job.