[mythtv-users] OT: How can I tell what process is writing to my hard drive?

[Daniel Agar]

> William Munson wrote:
>> Recently my myth backend system started to have continuous low level
>> hard drive activity 24 hours a day. Basically a continuous flicker, not
>> solid on. This is not normal for this system and I want to track down
>> who is doing all the I/O and hopefully even what file(s). Do any of the
>> experts here know how to troubleshoot this kind of a problem. Is there a
>> command that allows monitoring of drive activity like top does for
>> system activity?
>>
>> System is FC6 based on MythDora but heavily customized. Myth SVN and
>> system are pretty much up to date.
>>
>> TIA,
>> Bill
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> mythtv-users mailing list
>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>
> I don't use if very often but "lsof" lists open files. I suggest
> starting with "man lsof". Sorry if I had more experience with it I could
> give more specific instructions.
>
> Mike

First of all have you tried stopping mythbackend or mythfrontend to see if
the activity stops? Stopping mysql might also be something to check. If
somethings going wrong with mythbackend it could be spewing logs to
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.

lsof will give you a huge list of open files, could be useful if you find
which process is doing this but still don't know what its writing to. If
your system is idling and the disk is still being written to, the
"offending" process might show up in top if little else is running.