machine won't take a rest

[Chris Campbell_1]

If I have no active applications running on my workstation, it will access the disk every few seconds -- just two little flashes and you can hear the disk click. I am not sure why this is occuring. I run top and see that vxfsd is active, using about .9% CPU. Any ideas what it might be doing? Whatever it is, it is very regular. I am running HP-UX 11.0 final ACE 9911.

82 processes: 78 sleeping, 4 running
Cpu states:
LOAD USER NICE SYS IDLE BLOCK SWAIT INTR SSYS
0.34 1.2% 0.0% 3.2% 95.6% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

Memory: 93184K (48092K) real, 97076K (54120K) virtual, 81508K free Page# 1/3

TTY PID USERNAME PRI NI SIZE RES STATE TIME %WCPU %CPU COMMAND
? 1418 root 154 20 27508K 26476K sleep 72:45 3.61 3.60 X
pts/2 3883 unixman 154 20 31500K 14164K sleep 3:28 1.60 1.60 netscape
? 1492 unixman 154 20 444K 1032K sleep 0:03 0.98 0.98 dtterm
? 28 root 152 20 0K 0K run 0:42 0.95 0.95 vxfsd
? 1487 unixman 154 20 2100K 2112K sleep 2:33 0.46 0.46 dtwm
pts/2 3906 unixman 178 20 1044K 368K run 0:00 0.35 0.35 top
? 3 root 128 20 0K 0K sleep 1:40 0.11 0.11 statdaemon
? 368 root 154 20 32K 92K sleep 1:12 0.08 0.08 syncer
? 527 root 127 20 128K 360K sleep 0:31 0.05 0.05 netfmt
? 1114 root 154 20 6004K 1428K sleep 0:35 0.05 0.05 rpcd
? 685 root 152 20 0K 0K run 0:06 0.04 0.04 autofs_proc
? 4 root 128 20 0K 0K sleep 0:06 0.03 0.03 unhashdaemon
? 3354 unixman 154 30 264K 688K sleep 0:06 0.03 0.03 dtscreen
? 0 root 128 20 0K 0K sleep 0:02 0.02 0.02 swapper
? 1 root 168 20 380K 152K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 init
? 2 root 128 20 0K 0K sleep 0:03 0.02 0.02 vhand
? 12 root -32 20 0K 0K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 ttisr
? 18 root 147 20 0K 0K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 lvmkd
? 20 root 147 20 0K 0K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 lvmkd
? 138 root 168 20 168K 212K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 dhcpclient
? 488 root 154 20 80K 156K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 syslogd
? 497 root 155 20 72K 156K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 ptydaemon
? 516 root 127 20 60K 128K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 nktl_daemon
? 526 root 127 20 60K 132K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 ntl_reader
? 608 root 154 20 768K 784K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 rpcbind
? 666 root 154 20 776K 752K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 rpc.statd
? 672 root 154 20 980K 840K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 rpc.lockd
? 682 root 152 20 988K 952K run 0:00 0.02 0.02 automountd
? 735 root 154 20 236K 276K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 inetd
? 1137 root 64 20 260K 180K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 rbootd
? 1182 root 154 20 188K 240K sleep 0:09 0.02 0.02 pwgrd
? 1240 root 154 20 80K 144K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 cron
? 1269 root 154 20 2944K 1132K sleep 0:33 0.02 0.02 Aserver
? 1277 root 154 20 1124K 712K sleep 0:00 0.02 0.02 SLSd_daemon

[CHRIS_ANORUO]

That is a vxfs daemon process running. You X terminal and netscape are they ones taking higher CPU percentage. You can see what the process is linked to with glance.

[Devbinder Singh Marway]

Hi,

Have you got anything running from cron , that checks / writes data to hard disk?

I there are no active applications either boot into single user mode ,( with minimum apps running) see if you get the same problem? if not try stopping Aserver , automount, dhcp daemons one by one to see if the same happens?
Basically try just running the minimum if possible.

Are there any errors in syslog or rc.log for any services not started properly ?

Also check if you have the necessary patches on the system , ( try running check_patches script ( i think this is in usr/lib ( if not search for it))

It could be a 'bad' disk ?? ( you can try dd if=(disk) of=/dev/null to see if any errors are reported.

HTH

[thinphony]

Hi!
syncer runs automatically at intervals.Is it syncronizes the disk?
Install more memory may help? If due to memory paging.

I am not sure about it ,just threads.

thinphony.

[Chris Campbell_1]

I have booted the machine into single-user mode, and it STILL does it! Something must be causing VxFSd to access the disk. HP-UX is not paging I don't think because I have 288MB RAM. I doesn't act like paging anyway. It's just a little access that's very regular.