Ubuntu Keeps Spinning The Hard Disk

[rykel]

OK, allow me to correct myself... I meant, Ubuntu Hardy, Eeebuntu and Ubuntu Eee all "spin" (ie. read/write) my EeePC 4G SSD "hard disk" continuously, non-stop for a looooong time. This behaviour happens randomly whenever I run some possibly system-intensive task, such as opening a list of tabs in Firefox or installing a .deb file.

There is NOTHING to tell me what is doing the spinning, and my whole EeePC will slow to a crawl, including the mouse cursor movements and command line.

Do you happen to know what is wrong?

p/s. I do NOT get this behaviour with non-Ubuntu distros such as EeePCLinuxOS or even the default Asus EeePC Xandros.

[rykel]

Forgot to add that I am running ext2 with the following fstab on the 4GB SSD.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# -- This file has been automaticly generated by ntfs-config --
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sda1 :
UUID=bee7a888-14b4-42ae-96ca-e549b5a918ce / ext2 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1


I do NOT have a swap either.

[warp99]

You could add the noatime parameter and remove relatime so less writes will occur to the disk. So add this to your fstab line:


UUID=bee7a888-14b4-42ae-96ca-e549b5a918ce / ext2 noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1

I have the noatime switch with the same distro without any problems. In fact this post is being typed on a eeebuntu PC 701 right now. ;)

[rykel]

I have done what you said, although just a while ago, I changed my 512M RAM for a 2GB RAM, dang! (I wonder why an EeePC with no chances of 3D gaming or NVIDIA graphics card would need a 2GB RAM, oh well, thankfully 2GB RAM was not too expensive.)

Anyway, I was thinking that the problem was caused by the small amount of RAM and non-existent swap, which then forces Ubuntu to read/write to the SSD furiously. Hence my decision to try upgrading the RAM.

With this problem solved (hopefully!), then the only problem left on my system is to restore Network Manager, as my reinstalled Network Manager does NOT seem to have Roaming mode... any help?

[warp99]

... the only problem left on my system is to restore Network Manager, as my reinstalled Network Manager does NOT seem to have Roaming mode... any help?

Use wicd instead since it has much better features:

http://wicd.sourceforge.net/download.php

It's light, responsive and 'just works'.

[rykel]

I solved the Network Manager missing Roaming Mode mystery as well!

I simply purged all Network Manager files and reinstalled the program, and it works. Reason being that I had edited some NM config file before to prevent NM from communicating with Firefox...

Speaking of which, does WiCD detect the presence of Vodafone Mobile Connect Card Driver for Linux (VMC) as well, and proceeds to "inform" all programs that the system is already ONLINE via VMC?

NM does NOT do that and it is a hassle.

[warp99]

Speaking of which, does WiCD detect the presence of Vodafone Mobile Connect Card Driver for Linux (VMC) as well, and proceeds to "inform" all programs that the system is already ONLINE via VMC?

I assume your talking about this bug with Network Manager:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/191889

Certain programs are checking online state with Network Manager and starting in offline mode if a connection manager outside of Network Manager is used. Since wicd is a complete replacement for Network Manager this bug should not affect you unless wicd has the same bug, which I highly doubt it does.

[imdano]

Wicd isn't affected by this, since apps are written specifically to poll NetworkManager's DBus interface for the connection state. Wicd would have to emulate NM's DBus interface for it to be affected (we don't). The downside is apps making use of NM's DBus interface won't immediately become aware that you've lost your connection when you actually do.