tracking what files are being accessed by a process?

[Matt Price]

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 12:20 PM, Matt Price <moptop99-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 10:41 AM, Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Matt Price <moptop99-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>> hey folks,
>>>
>>> I'm having a trouble with skype on my ubuntu 12.10 laptop -- it
>>> monopolizes the disk with very heavy reads, and my system grinds to a
>>> halt.
>>>
>>> I'd like to at least check to see what it's reading, before I give up
>>> and stop using it; is there a simple way to do this?  thanks,
>>> Matt
>>
>> The usual tools used for this are lsof and fuser, which have somewhat
>> different user
>> interfaces for determining processes associated with files.
>>
>> fuser is in the package "psmisc"
>>
>> lsof is in the package "lsof"
>>
>> Alternatively, you can figure quite a bit out from what's found in /proc
>>
>> Here's the file listing for the instance of firefox that I have running:
>>
>> cbbrowne at cbbrowne /proc/30090/fd> ps auxww | grep firefox/firefox
>> cbbrowne 30090 15.6  7.0 809344 278864 pts/1   SNl  10:32   1:12
>> /home/cbbrowne/firefox/firefox
>> cbbrowne 30614  0.0  0.0   6304   604 pts/1    S+   10:39   0:00 grep
>> firefox/firefox
>> cbbrowne at cbbrowne /proc/30090/fd> cd
>> cbbrowne at cbbrowne ~> ps auxww | grep firefox/firefox
>> cbbrowne 30090 15.4  7.0 809408 279064 pts/1   SNl  10:32   1:12
>> /home/cbbrowne/firefox/firefox
>> cbbrowne 30632  0.0  0.0   6304   604 pts/1    S+   10:39   0:00 grep
>> firefox/firefox
>> cbbrowne at cbbrowne ~> cd /proc/30090/fd
>> cbbrowne at cbbrowne /proc/30090/fd> ls -l

>> Do similar for skype, and you should get some more or less interesting
>> information.
>> --
>
> huh, that does seem intresting.  In particular, skype seems to be
> going through all the files in my .mozilla/firefox profile, espeially
> the zotero storage directory, which is rather large.  hmm. I don't
> really like that at all!  not sure though what  I can do to stop it,
> or why it would ever happen in the first place!

just for the archive:  I solved this using the apparmor profile pasted here:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=b1dicunW

now skype startup is much faster and my system far more responsive
when skype is up.  and skype/microsoft are no longer tracking my
internet usage, or whatever it was they were doing before.

thanks guys!

matt
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