vi question

[Wilfred Chau_1]

Got a problem today. When vi a file as oracle, it tooks 30sec-1 min before I can edit. Thought maybe disk problem, /var is 81% utilizied. Kill a process that had been running for 30000+ mins, didn't help. Pinging didn't have packet lost. What do you think may be the problem?

[Philip Chan_1]

What is the size of the file under vi edit?

[Wilfred Chau_1]

just a new file.

[Shannon Petry · Accepted solution]

It could be a problem with the size or usage of the disks owning /var.

Remember that the swap/cache/temp dir for vi is '/var/tmp'.

Resolution: Clean up /var/tmp, and make sure your disks are not so busy as to have no availability for writing. I have seen busy systems do this, because of a single disk being used for the OS, and most of the systems swap. If this is the case, then Oracle paging to system swap could be killing fs performance on the OS disk.

Best to look at glance, and see what it says! It will tell you if you have a disk bottleneck, and can help recommend solutions....


Regards,
Shannon

[Wodisch]

Hello Wilfred,

check for the size of the directories:
ls -ld /var /var/tmp /tmp

UN*X is reading and writing directories ALWAYS
at once/completely - hence, if one of those is
some MB in size, those will be read and written
every time - it does not matter how many
entries do exist in there. Check with
sar -a 1 100
while you start your "vi". If the column
"dblk/s" is getting to high, then that is the
reason! Go to sinlge-user mode, remove the
directory and re-create it (only way).

HTH,
Wodisch