vmstat 'b' (disk busy?) field keeps climbing ...

[Marc G. Fournier]

On Sat, 24 Jun 2006, Dmitry Morozovsky wrote:

> On Sat, 24 Jun 2006, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>
> MGF> > > MGF> is there a way of finding out what processes are blocked?
> MGF> > >
> MGF> > > Aren't they in 'D' status by ps?
> MGF> > Use ps axlww. In this way, at least actual blocking points are shown.
> MGF>
> MGF> 'k, stupid question then ... what am I searching for?
> MGF>
> MGF> # ps axlww | awk '{print $9}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr
>
> Well, try
>
> ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
>
> which should give you a list of blocked-in-uninterruptible-syscall processes
> excluding kernel threads...

Nadda:

pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto#

yet vmstat shows 4:

  0 4 0 7248532 229668  545   0   0   0 735   0   5   0  365 3308 1529 15  8 78
  0 4 0 7239388 222364  127   8   2   0 158   0  27   0  412 2324 1075  8  5 87

if I do it repeatedly, fairly often, I can occasionally get one or two:

pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
     0 18886     1   0  96  0 10316  5968 proctr DsJ   ??    0:02.81 /usr/local/sbin/httpd
     0 19673     1   0  96  0 13776  6688 proctr DsJ   ??    0:02.88 /usr/local/sbin/httpd -DSSL
     0 46540 46538   1   8  0  5020  2396 ppwait Ds    p4    0:00.07 -csh (csh)
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
     0 55163 55160   6  96  0     0     8 proctr DE    ??    0:00.00 uptime
     0 46540 46538   1  96  0  5020  2396 proctr Ds    p4    0:00.07 -csh (csh)
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
     0 46540 46538  40   8  0  5020  2396 ppwait Ds    p4    0:00.08 -csh (csh)
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'
pluto# ps axlww | awk '$10 ~ /^D[^L]/'

But its definitely not 'a consistent 4' ...

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy at hub.org                              MSN . scrappy at hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664