newfs locks entire machine for 20seconds

Dieter freebsd at sopwith.solgatos.com
Wed Jan 30 17:49:19 PST 2008


> > What *exactly* do you mean by
> > 
> >> machine still locks up with no activity for anywhere from 20 to 30 seconds.
> > 
> > Is there disk activity? (e.g. activity light(s) flashing if you have them)
> 
> Cant tell if there is disk activity its in a DC miles away ;)
> 
> > Does top continue to update the screen during the 20-30 seconds?
> >
> > I'm thinking that newfs has queued up a bunch of disk i/o, and other
> > disk i/o gets locked out, but activities that don't require any disk i/o
> > (like top, once it is up and running) could continue.  Is that what is
> > happening?
> 
> No all sessions totally freeze. I have top set to 1 second refreshes and
> the clock literally stops and then 20-30 seconds later continues.

Wow!

> All sessions are via ssh not X if that's of interest.
> 
> I could understand if IO to disk for other processes became slow but
> everything including things like top just stop which is quite odd and
> concerning.

Ok, new idea.  Your disk activity is via the network, and your sessions
are via the network.  Could it be that something network related is saturated?


More information about the freebsd-stable mailing list