questions about periodic

[pauls at utdallas.edu]

--On September 5, 2006 10:09:02 PM -0500 Jonathan Horne 
<freebsd at dfwlp.com> wrote:

> i have a couple virtual machines running freebsd 6.1-;4 on a ms vs2005
> host,  and as of the moment of this writing (and for a while now
> actually), they are  idling at near 0% utilization.  but during the
> nights, they really get going  to the point that they ramp the cpu fan
> speeds to max on the my host box!  it  takes them hours and hours to
> quiet back down, sometimes not until i power  the virtual machines off
> and back on again.
>
> im wondering if the cause of these early hours cpu hogging could be
> coming  from items running from periodic?  i think the daily folder is
> probably the  culprit.  is there a good way to see which all scripts are
> being run, what  their scheduling and priority is?  i would like to cull
> out as many as i  could live without (if possible).
>
If you're going to do that, do it in the right way.  Disable the scripts 
in /etc/periodic.conf.  Read the man pages.

Paul Schmehl (pauls at utdallas.edu)
Adjunct Information Security Officer
The University of Texas at Dallas
http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/