Re: wierd behaviour...

Michael O'Reilly (michael@metal.iinet.net.au)
28 Feb 1997 09:20:17 +0800


hpa@transmeta.com (H. Peter Anvin) writes:
> By author: "Michael O'Reilly" <michael@metal.iinet.net.au>
> >
> > There's a simple reason for all this. The Sysvinit does a sync() in
> > it's main loop. So every time it gets a SIGCHLD from a process w/o a
> > parent dying, it does a sync(), which flushes all the dirty buffers
> > (including atime mods), and voilo! Tons of disk writing.
> >
>
> WHY???
>
> -hpa

No idea. :) Belive me, next reboot that's one patch that's going in
fast.

news 8869 2.9 5.6 12568 10840 ? S Feb 21 296:18 /usr/sbin/innd
root 1 7.3 0.0 804 48 ? S Feb 20 851:32 init [3]

Init has used nearly 3 times as much CPU as innd. And that innd is
taking a full feed! As far as I can see, it's because init is
constantly sync()'ing producing constant runs through the disk queue.

Michael.