how to tell which process is accessing my disk?

[Tyler Aviss]

Cool.
I've been working with BSD servers more than Linux lately. I've found
many irritating inconstancies about how commands work, generally stuff
that doesn't work in BSD the same was a linux (missing flags, etc).

But one that that BSD *does* have is IO usage in top (and the
ever-useful systat command).
In Linux, pressing "m" in Top switches the memory usage bar on and
off. In BSD is switches between CPU and IO modes... very nice :-)

I'll have to try "iotop" in 'nix though. Disk IO is often a worse
culprit for crappy performance than CPU usage (and can contribute to
issues that appear CPU-related as well).


On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 9:22 AM, Lennart Sorensen
<lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 08:39:17PM -0400, Matt Price wrote:
>> i have a vague feeling i've sent this query out before, but i can't find
>> a record of it.  is there a tool that lets me see what process is
>> accessing the disk?  i just had a half-hour period where i couldn't use
>> my computer at ll because trackerd was monopolizing the disk.  i'd like
>> to be able to fire up a command-line tool that will tell me what's going
>> on in such cases.
>
> # apt-cache show iotop
> Package: iotop
> Priority: optional
> Section: admin
> Installed-Size: 88
> Maintainer: Paul Wise <pabs-8fiUuRrzOP0dnm+yROfE0A at public.gmane.org>
> Architecture: all
> Version: 0.2-2
> Depends: python (>= 2.5), python-support (>= 0.7.1)
> Filename: pool/main/i/iotop/iotop_0.2-2_all.deb
> Size: 12658
> MD5sum: c6858d7ae3ee179b26d509118951e457
> SHA1: 17c806efab5b9aedf791e8decd36b933a41ce362
> SHA256: 801c113b0166d6518e67dba2c4aab14ea0a9274097e90e7c1f9ca26e43d3edb5
> Description: simple top-like I/O monitor
>  iotop does for I/O usage what top(1) does for CPU usage. It watches I/O
>  usage information output by the Linux kernel (requires 2.6.20 or later)
>  and displays a table of current I/O usage by processes on the system.
>  Handy for answering the question "Why is my disk churning so much?".
> Homepage: http://guichaz.free.fr/iotop/
> Tag: admin::monitoring
>
> --
> Len Sorensen
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-- 
Tyler Aviss
Systems Support
LPIC/LPIC-2
(647) 302-0942
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