Debian-4.9.0-mvebu: constant writing to disk

Hello,

I am using my NAS326 with a USB flash stick to boot from with Kernel linux-4.12.4-mvebu-tld-1 and Debian-4.9.0-mvebu-tld-12-rootfs-bodhi.tar.bz2

As always when using flash memory I look if something is writing frequently to this disk.

And I found this:

root@nas326:/boot# iotop -obtqqq
15:40:03     7 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 % 99.99 % [ksoftirqd/0]
15:40:05     7 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 % 99.99 % [ksoftirqd/0]
15:40:07     7 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 % 99.99 % [ksoftirqd/0]
15:40:09     7 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 % 99.99 % [ksoftirqd/0]
15:40:11     7 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 % 99.99 % [ksoftirqd/0]
15:40:13     7 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 % 99.99 % [ksoftirqd/0]
15:40:14     7 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 % 99.99 % [ksoftirqd/0]
15:40:16     7 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 % 99.99 % [ksoftirqd/0]
15:40:17     7 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 % 99.99 % [ksoftirqd/0]
and so on

How could I disable this?

Thanks in advance,
Peter

Peter,

It might be wrong reporting by iotop. Note that nothing is really written to or reading from disk. I'll take look to see if newer iotop is available.

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Peter,

I've verified that this version does not give out wrong information.

dpkg -l iotop

ii  iotop                                         0.6-2                       armhf                       simple top-like I/O monitor

uname -a

Linux Nas326 4.12.4-mvebu-tld-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Jul 29 21:56:37 PDT 2017 armv7l GNU/Linux

cat /etc/debian_version

9.1

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2017 03:03AM by bodhi.

Hi Bodhi,

but there is definitely something accessing my USB drive as I can see the USB LED flickering every two seconds.

Cheers, Peter

Peter,

> but there is definitely something accessing my USB
> drive as I can see the USB LED flickering every tw
> o seconds.

Most definitely something in previous version had caused it. Because I was seeing the same iotop output you saw (in Debian jessie, iotop version 0.6-1). But I did not believe there was I/O. My educated guess is: the LED was triggered at a level where the disk controller resides, and was not actual IO operations that triggered it.

Now that I'm running the new version 0.6-2 in Debian stretch, iotop is dead silent on my USB rootfs. The USB LED is also off completely while iotop is running.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2017 03:57AM by bodhi.

Hi Bodhi,

ok, I try to update to 9.1 first...

I hope with this upgrade the MAC randomization stops too ;)

Greetings, Peter



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2017 04:04AM by ptosch.

Peter,

> I hope with this upgrade the MAC randomization sto
> ps too ;)

No :) it won't stop until you put the MAC address in /etc/network/interfaces. See this post for explanation:

http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,27108,36142,page=11#msg-36142

Below is my setup (I blanked out the last 4 numbers):

cat /etc/network/interfaces

auto lo eth0
iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet static
        address 192.168.0.236
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        gateway 192.168.0.1
	hwaddress ether 60:31:xx:xx:xx:xx

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Hi Bodhi,

with Your help I am now on Debian stretch, MAC address is stable and several disk IO tools report a silent system.
Only iotop has still the same output as described in my first post, but the USB LED flickering stopped.

Thank You!

Cheers, Peter

ptosch Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi Bodhi,
>
> with Your help I am now on Debian stretch, MAC add
> ress is stable and several disk IO tools report a
> silent system.
> Only iotop has still the same output as described
> in my first post, but the USB LED flickering stopp
> ed.
>
> Thank You!
>
> Cheers, Peter

Cool!

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