Process "mdworker" Writes to Disk Every 10 Seconds

I noticed disk activity occurring every 10 seconds while my computer was idle. In Activity Monitor I could see this writing going on and at the same time the process "mdworker" would tick up just a little bit of processor activity. A Restart didn't help. The following is what I did to make it stop. I've seen many posts on here with a similar problem so maybe this info will be helpful to someone.
I brought up a Terminal window and entered the following command:
sudo fs_usage -w -f filesys
That will show youa continuous list of all processes that are reading/writing to disk (use Control-c to make it stop). I found mdworker doing a fair amount of disk activity every 10 seconds. But the important thing is that it was the identical activity every 10 seconds, and the common thing in almost every entry was "Default Folder X". So I concluded that it was having trouble indexing something about Default Folder's data. (mdworker is used to index your data via Spotlight.) After uninstalling and reinstalling Default Folder, the constant writing stopped and has yet to happen again.
If you're having a problem similar to this you may find this method of identifying the culprit and fixing it useful.

Try this, courtesy of Baltwo. It will delete the Spotlight V-100 index and then force Spotlight to re-index.
Be absolutely certain to only copy/paste these commands exactly. DO NOT try to type these in. One typo or wrong space in the first one could wipe your drive competely. Hit return after each.
Delete the entire Spotlight directory and reindex, running these commands in the Terminal app:
*sudo rm -R /.Spotlight-V100*
*sudo mdutil -i on /*
*sudo mduitl -E /*
https://discussions.apple.com/message/12988300#12988300

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Init writes to disk every few seconds?

Just wondering if anyone knows why init is writing 16K to disk every few seconds. It kinda annoys me.
I'm using the standard 2.6.11 kernel -- nothing special about the daemons I'm running, either.

Try this, courtesy of Baltwo. It will delete the Spotlight V-100 index and then force Spotlight to re-index.
Be absolutely certain to only copy/paste these commands exactly. DO NOT try to type these in. One typo or wrong space in the first one could wipe your drive competely. Hit return after each.
Delete the entire Spotlight directory and reindex, running these commands in the Terminal app:
*sudo rm -R /.Spotlight-V100*
*sudo mdutil -i on /*
*sudo mduitl -E /*
https://discussions.apple.com/message/12988300#12988300

Hard disk always working - sync_supers writting to disk every 5 second

As the topic says. My computer is on my desk while I work and I can't stand the noise of hard disk doing something every 5 seconds. I think I noticed this since 2.6.36 kernel.
When computer is completely idle it still writes to disk.
Tried Ubuntu 10.10 and got the same result. I have WD Caviar Blue 500gb. On ext4 filesystem there is jbd2/sda* doing write every 5 seconds or so and on reiserfs there is sync_supers doing the same. I guess those that is journaling acitivy, but its anoying to hear hard drive working when computer is completely idle.
Any tips?

linux wrote:Does anyone know the destination where sync_supers is writing to?
The Linux kernel mailing list has some information that may help on identifying what sync_supers is doing, http://lkml.org/lkml/2012/4/11/147.
While you wait for kernel patches, there are some mount options that other people have suggested may help:
Use noatime or at least relatime for ext* filesystems
Use the option commit=60 or commit=300 to lengthen the time between syncs of data and metadata from 5 seconds to 1 or 5 minutes. However, if the computer crashes between commits there may be some data loss.
Use hdparm to change the acoustic management settings – https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 5#p1063185

What program access hard disk every 30 second?

I have a very loud hard disk. The hard disk make a very short noice every 30 seconds, even for a new boot. Anyway to check which programming access the hard disk repeatly so I can figure out if it's possible to make the machine quiet?

somthing I read about disk flush/sync timings. There is some sort of 'laptop' mode in some kernels that if set will cause the disk to sync after a period of time in order to let APM/ACPI put the drive to sleep.
There may be settings for your filesystem to do the same(!?). I remember old Windoze NT4 had similar problem and was not remedied until Win2k for use on laptops .... yuck, ... I said the W word.
Here's something I just dug-up:
Laptop mode ===========
This small doc describes the 2.4 laptop mode patch.
Last updated 2003-05-25, Jens Axboe <[email protected]>
Introduction ------------
A few properties of the Linux vm makes it virtually impossible to attempt to spin down the hard drive in a laptop for a longer period of time (more than a handful of seconds). This means you are lucky if you can even reach the break even point with regards to power consumption, let alone expect any decrease.
One problem is the age time of dirty buffers. Linux uses 30 seconds per default, so if you dirty any data then flusing of that data will commence at most 30 seconds from then. Another is the journal commit interval of journalled file systems such as ext3, which is 5 seconds on a stock kernel. Both of these are tweakable either from proc/sysctl or as mount options though, and thus partly solvable from user space.
The kernel update daemon (kupdated) also runs at specific intervals, flushing old dirty data out. Default is every 5 seconds, this too can be tweaked from sysctl.
So what does the laptop mode patch do? It attempts to fully utilize the hard drive once it has been spun up, flushing the old dirty data out to disk. Instead of flushing just the expired data, it will clean everything. When a read causes the disk to spin up, we kick off this flushing after a few seconds. This means that once the disk spins down again, everything is up to date. That allows longer dirty data and journal expire times.
It follows that you have to set long expire times to get long spin downs. This means you could potentially loose 10 minutes worth of data, if you set a 10 minute expire count instead of just 30 seconds worth. The biggest risk here is undoubtedly running out of battery.
Settings --------
The main knob is /proc/sys/vm/laptop mode. Setting that to 1 switches the vm (and block layer) to laptop mode. Leaving it to 0 makes the kernel work like before. When in laptop mode, you also want to extend the intervals desribed above. See the laptop-mode.sh script for how to do that.
It can happen that the disk still keeps spinning up and you don't quite know why or what causes it. The laptop mode patch has a little helper for that as well, /proc/sys/vm/block-dump. When set to 1, it will dump info to the kernel message buffer about what process caused the io. Be very careful when playing with this setting, it is advisable to shut down syslog first!
Result ------
Using the laptop-mode.sh script with its default settings, I get the full 10 minutes worth of drive spin down. Provided your work load is cached, the disk will only spin up every 10 minutes (well actually, 9 minutes and 55 seconds due to the 5 second delay in flushing dirty data after the last read completes). I can't tell you exactly how much extra battery life you will gain in laptop mode, it will vary greatly on the laptop and workload in question. The only way to know for sure is to try it out. Getting 10% extra battery life is not unrealistic.
Notes -----
Patch only changes journal expire time for ext3. reiserfs uses a hardwire value, should be trivial to adapt though (basically just make it call get_buffer_flushtime() and uses that). I have not looked at other journalling file systems, I'll happily accept patches to rectify that!

Mini trying to eject non existent disk, every 12 seconds

Long story cut short, I had a DVD get stuck in my mini, but persuaded it out by holding it slot down (eventually). Trouble is it is still trying to eject the disk, about every 12 seconds.
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Cheers

The drive is clearly not functioning correctly or it would not have released the disk in the first place. The fact it seemed quite hard to get it into the drive is a further possible indicator, though slot loading drives do offer quite high levels of resistance when a disk is inserted, just to make sure that the drive isn't likely to try and swallow objects that are perhaps not intended!
The more you describe this though, the more it sounds to me as if it's going to be inevitable to open the system up and examine the drive, or simply add an external optical drive and ignore the internal one - at least for the time being. It certainly doesn't sound to me like a simple issue of the drive being misaligned, and while transporting the system in a bag rather than packed up neatly might have shaken it about a bit, the internal frame on which the drive is mounted is not prone to movement, and nor is the outer casing.

PostGres 9.3.4 kicks off a 4688 Process Start in Security Log every 30 seconds - why?

I'm using windows OS with elevated Security. I'm using PostGres 9.3.4. My Security Log is being spammed with 4688 messages from postgres.exe every 30 seconds. Is this normal? Is there some kind of polling or something that Postgres
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This is a SQL Server forum. I suggest you post your question in a PostGres forum.

Why writes LabVIEW only every 2 seconds the measured Value to a Excel (In a while loop with 100 ms tact)?

Hi everybody,
I use the myDAQ to measure speed, ampere, and voltage of a battery driven motor. (For Current measurement, i use a Sensor which outputs a 0-10 V signal). I placed all DAQ-Assitants in a while loop with a [Wait until next ms multiple] clock and set a value of 100 ms. I thougt, Labview will now write into my text file 10 times a second all values. In fact, as you can see in the attached text file, Labview only writes in a unsteady interval of 1-2 seconds a value, which is too less.
The question: Did I do anything wrong, how can you create VI that writes you lets say 10 values a second into text file? Or is simply the DigitalMultimeter input of the myDAQ not able to sample a rate of 10 Hz? I couldn´t find any information in the specification handbook about the sample rate of the DMM?
If anyone can help me would be great! Thanx a lot, Markus
Attachments:
Measure Speed+Current+Voltage into Excel.vi ‏175 KB
Test7.txt ‏1 KB

File I/O is not very efficient. I recommend that you do you file logging in a parallel task. Have one task do your data acquision. This task would then pass the data to be logged to the logging task via a queue. That way your file operations do not impact your data acquision. Also, express VIs are not very efficient. You would be better off accessing that directly using the DAQ VIs. The express VIs contain lots of steps that do not need to be done every time you call it such as initializing the device.
Mark Yedinak
"Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?"
Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - Gordon Lightfoot

Hitting the disk write every 3 seconds!

Hello,
Oracle seems to be hitting the disk every 3 seconds - on checking I find that it is the
oracle checkpoint process which writes to the control files every 3 seconds!
Is there a way to make it longer?
There are no parameters in the init.ora for this one.
(log_checkpoint_interval is 10000 and log_checkpoint_timeout is 1800).
I have tried with Oracle 8.1.6 and 8.1.7 on redhat7 - same results.
The disk access is driving me crazy!
strace on ckpt process:
pwrite(407, "\25\2\0\0\3\0\0\0Q\26\0\0\377\377\1\4\257I\0\0\2\0\0\0"..., 4096, 12288) = 4096
pwrite(406, "\25\2\0\0\3\0\0\0Q\26\0\0\377\377\1\4\257I\0\0\2\0\0\0"..., 4096, 12288) = 4096
pwrite(405, "\25\2\0\0\3\0\0\0Q\26\0\0\377\377\1\4\257I\0\0\2\0\0\0"..., 4096, 12288) = 4096
ls -l /proc/<ckpt-pid>/fd also shows the files being written.

I believe that this is part of the incremental checkpoint process of 8i. Every 3 seconds CKPT scans the checkpoint queues, finds the lowest RBA (redo byte address)of the buffers at the heads of the queues and writes this out to the control file. This is written to a "thread private" location in the control file, hence the call to pwrite. This is a light-weight control file update using an offset into the control file and is very efficient. This recorded RBA represents the current position of the incremental checkpoint for the instance.
(Note that LOG_CHECKPOINT_INTERVAL and LOG_CHECKPOINT_TIMEOUT mean completely different things in 8i than previously.)

ITunes freezes for 3 seconds about every 15 seconds - HELP PLEASE!!

My iTunes keeps freezing every 15 seconds for about 3 seconds. I have already reinstalled iTunes twice and it still happens.
Please help me!

Welcome to AD!
Look in Task Manager > Processes tab. Click on the CPU column twice.
Watch it to see what other process is taking CPU time every 15 seconds.

How do I write snap shot of my data to measurement file every 5 seconds

Hi There
I'm trying take a snapshot of my data stream once every 5 seconds and write it to a .LVM file. I'm having trouble with the "Write to Measurement File" VI. The rate at which it writes data to the file appears to be dictated by the "Samples to Read" parameter in the DAQ assistant. I've tried placing the "Write to Measurement File" VI inside a case structure and initiating the case structure with an "Elapsed Time" VI. This only results in a 5 second delay before the "Write to Measurement File" VI initiates. Once the "Write to Measurement File" VI is initiated it begins writing at 20 x per second. Is there a way to change this or dictate the rate at which the "Write to Measurement File" VI exicutes?
My reason for slowing down the write rate are, 1) Reduce disk space taken up by my data file. 2) Reduce CPU usage and hard disk access cycles.
The reason I can't increase the "Samples to Read" value in the DAQ assitant (to match my data writing requirement) is that my VI will begin to miss events and triggers.
I'm sure I can't be the only person who needs high frequency data acquisition and low frequency writing of the processed data to disk? I can't however see a straight forward way of achiving this.
The hardware I am using is a NI USB 6008 DAQ, acquiring analogue voltage data at 100hz.
Thanks in advance for your help
Cheers
Kim
Solved!
Go to Solution.

The case structure and the elapsed time function should work. Did you configure it to reset when the time target is reached? You should get a single true and then the output will be false until the time has elapsed again. The write to file would not be running 20 times a second. Post your code if you still have problems.

HT201528 IDVD version of videos pause momentarily about every ten seconds and diagonal lines are ziggy. Image looks good all the way through the process and even on idvd

I am trying to make a dvd from a video I shot with a Sony HD avchd camera on a new mac mini running mac os x version 10.7.4
I'm using an up to date Imovie but copied IDVD version 7.1.2 and the support libraryt from an up to date macbook. The video is about 40 minutes long. It looks beautiful all the way from teh camera to playing it on idvd, but when I play the dvd on a player or in a computer it stops momentariily about every ten seconds and the picture is ziggy on diagonal lines.
Also, if I try to save the movie as a .mov file there is no audio.
Can't I move idvd to my new computer?

Hi
Why is the picture better all the way to iDVD - then degrades on the DVD
• DVD is as standard - interlaced SD-Video
If You need better then only way is via Blu Ray
• iMovie'08 to 11 - can not deliver this any way known to me to iDVD - first step in the degradation process
Use iMovie HD6 or FinalCut to do this delivery to 100% of what's possibly
Jaggy diagonal lines - mostly due to the use of iMovie'08 to 11 as they only deliver every second line in an already limited quality as interlaced SD-Video - taking away 50% doesn't improve a bit
Jumpy movie -. most often due to feeding iDVD wrong frame rate and forceing it to convert - IT DOES this BADLY. I use JES_Deinterlacer (free on internet) to do this and it does this even better than pay applications.
iDVD can only deliver 25fps (PAL) or 29.97fps (30fps) (NTSC) - so feeding it
• 24 i or p
• 50p or
• 60p
Will not improve at all.
If iMovie'08 to 11 are only option - Then
• DO NOT - Share to iDVD - as this too degrade the final product
• I do - Share to Media Browser - and as - LARGE - Not HD or other resolution as this too degrades quality
More can be said on this - My long note follows - if of interest.
DVD quality
1. iDVD 08, 09 & 11 has three levels of qualities. (version 7.0.1, 7,0.4 & 7.1.1) and iDVD 6 has the two last ones
• Professional Quality
(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - BEST (but not always for short movies e.g. up to 45 minutes in total)
• Best Performances
(movies + menus less than 60 min.) - High quality on final DVD (Can be best for short movies)
• High Quality (in iDVD08 or 09) / Best Quality (in iDVD6)
(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - slightly lower quality than above
Menu can take 15 minutes or even more - I use a very simple one with no audio or animation like ”Brushed Metal” in old Themes.
About double on DL DVDs.
2. Video from
• FCE/P - Export out as full quality QuickTime.mov (not self-containing, no conversion)
• iMovie x-6 - Don't use ”Share/Export to iDVD” = destructive even to movie project and especially so
when the movie includes photos and the Ken Burns effect NOT is used. Instead just drop or import the iMovie movie project icon (with a Star on it) into iDVD theme window.
• iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not meant to go to iDVD. Go via Media Browser or rather use iMovie HD 6 from start.
3. I use Roxio Toast™ to make an as slow burn as possibly e.g. x4 or x1 (in iDVD’08 or 09 this can also be set)
This can also be done with Apple’s Disk Utilities application when burning from a DiskImage.
4. There has to be about or more than 25Gb free space on internal (start-up) hard disk. iDVD can't
use an external one as scratch disk (if it is not start-up disc). For SD-Video - if HD-material is used I guess that 4 to 5 times more would do.
5. I use Verbatim ( also recommended by many - Taiyo Yuden DVDs - I can’t get hold of it to test )
6. I use DVD-R (no +R or +/-RW) - DVD-R play’s on more and older DVD-Players
7. Keep NTSC to NTSC - or - PAL to PAL when going from iMovie to iDVD
(I use JES_Deinterlacer to keep frame per sec. same from editing to the Video-DVD result.)
8. Don’t burn more than three DVDs at a time - but let the laser cool off for a while before next batch.
iDVD quality also depends on.
• DVD is a standard in it self. It is Standard Definition Quality = Same as on old CRT-TV sets and can not
deliver anything better that this.
HD-DVD was a short-lived standard and it was only a few Toshiba DVD-players that could playback.
These DVDs could be made in DVD-Studio Pro. But they don’t playback on any other standard DVD-Player.
Blu-Ray / BD can be coded onto DVDs but limited in time to - about 20-30 minutes and then need
_ Roxio Toast™ 10 Pro incl. BD-component
_ BD disks and burner if full length movies are to be stored
_ BD-Player or PlayStation3 - to be able to playback
The BD-encoded DVDs can be play-backed IF Mac also have Roxio DVD-player tool. Not on any standard Mac or DVD-player
Full BD-disks needs a BD-player (in Mac) as they need blue-laser to be read. No red-laser can do this.
• HOW much free space is there on Your internal (start-up) hard disk. Go for approx. 25Gb.
less than 5Gb and Your result will most probably not play.
• How it was recorded - Tripod vs Handheld Camera. A stable picture will give a much higher quality
• Audio is most often more critical than picture. Bad audio and with dropouts usually results in a non-viewed movie.
• Use of Video-editor. iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not the tools for DVD-production. They discard every second line resulting in a close to VHS-tape quality.
iMovie 1 to HD6 and FinalCut any version delivers same quality as Camera record in = 100% to iDVD
• What kind of movie project You drop into it. MPEG4 seems to be a bad choice.
other strange formats are .avi, .wmv, .flash etc. Convert to streamingDV first
Also audio formats matters. I use only .aiff or from miniDV tape Camera 16-bit
strange formats often problematic are .avi, .wmv, audio from iTunes, .mp3 etc
Convert to .aiff first and use this in movie project
• What kind of standard - NTSC movie and NTSC DVD or PAL to PAL - no mix.
(If You need to change to do a NTSC DVD from PAL material let JES_Deinterlacer_3.2.2 do the conversion)
(Dropping a PAL movie into a NTSC iDVD project
(US) NTSC DVDs most often are playable in EU
(EU) PAL DVDs most often needs to be converted to play in US
UNLESS. They are play-backed by a Mac - then You need not to care
• What kind of DVDs You are using. I use Verbatim DVD-R (this brand AND no +R or +/-RW)
• How You encode and burn it. Two settings prior iDVD’08 or 09
Pro Quality (only in iDVD 08 & 09)
Best / High Quality (not always - most often not)
Best / High Performances (most often my choice before Pro Quality)
1. go to iDVD pref. menu and select tab far right and set burn speed to x1 (less errors = plays better) - only in iDVD 08 & 09
(x4 by some and may be even better)
2. Project info. Select Professional Encoding - only in iDVD 08 & 09.
Region codes.
iDVD - only burn Region = 0 - meaning - DVDs are playable everywhere
DVD Studio pro can set Region codes.
1 = US
2 = EU
unclemano wrote
What it turned out to be was the "quality" settings in iDVD. The total clip time was NOT over 2 hours or 4.7GB, yet iDVD created massive visual artifacts on the "professional quality" setting.
I switched the settings to "high quality" which solved the problem. According iDVD help, "high quality" determines the best bit rate for the clips you have.
I have NEVER seen iDVD do this before, especially when I was under the 2 hour and 4.7GB limits.
For anyone else, there seem to be 2 places in iDVD to set quality settings, the first is under "preferences" and the second under "project info." They do NOT seem to be linked (i.e. if you change one, the other is NOT changed). take care, Mario
TO GET IT TO WORK SLIGHTLY FASTER
• Minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up hard disk
• No other programs running in BackGround e.g. Energy-Saver
• Don’t let HD spin down or be turned off (in Energy-Save)
• Move hard disks that are not to be used to Trash - To be disconnected/turned off
• Goto Spotlight and set the rest of them under Integrity (not to be scanned)
• Set screen-saver to a folder without any photo - then make an active corner (up right for me) and set
pointer to this - turns on screen saver - to show that it has nothing to show
Yours Bengt W

I am having to run v3.5.10 because even now with latest 3.6 that version - every 30 seconds or so I hear a process open and then close. Can't track it down even in task manager - too brief but it's insistent! So stuck having to use 3.5

I have to use V3.5.10 despite wanting to run 3.6 (just updated to 3.6.6 too). However when I run 3.6 I hear thru my sounds set up a process open briefly and then close every 30 seconds or so - it's very regular and insistent and I'd like to know what it is and why. It's too brief to spot in Task manager processes listing. This did happen once under 3.5 I seem to recall but was cured when it upgraded.
== This happened ==
Every time Firefox opened
== Pretty much soon after I first applied and ran 3.6

My Win sounds give me a sound each time an app or process opens and another when it closes - thus I know from that any time something happens.
I have 3.6.6 on as well as 3.5.10 - so can run either. But running .3.6.6 despite being update still has this odd process open and close every half minute.

Disk eject sound every 30 seconds

For the past 3 weeks, my iMac is making the 'disk eject' sound every 30 seconds. It's maddening. It persists whenever the machine is not asleep and in both user modes. Any thoughts?

If it's a click click, it may well be the sound of a dying hard drive. Back up all your data to a firewire external as soon as you can, I use SuperDuper! to make a bootable clone.

Why does Process 'Translate' keep crashing every 12 seconds?

Hi folks
I have an errant process called 'translate' (note: not 'translated') which appears to be part of Rosetta. It resides in usr/libexec/oah. In my case it crashes every 12 seconds (not eleven, not thirteen). I have a rather large crash log for translate (360mb). So my question is
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It's the one part of Growl that is not recompiled for Universal yet. I found the answer in a thread on this forum:
http://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?t=8175&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start =45
Download the Universal recompiled version here
http://evands.penguinmilitia.net/GrowlImporter.mdimporter.zip
Unzip the file and overwrite the file with the same name in this location:
~/Library/PreferencePanes/Growl.prefPane/Contents/Resources/GrowlHelperApp.app/C ontents/Library/Spotlight/
(You can get there quickly via Go->Go to Folder in Finder).
Log out and log in again.
17" Alum. PowerBook (1GHz) Mac OS X (10.4.8) 1 GM RAM

Why is disk space taken every 20 seconds?

Recently, I used boot camp to install Windows XP. I used the partition of 32GB for XP. Now, when I look at the macintosh HD info, it shows that the capacity is 153.88 GB and available are 126 GB. The only thing that I stored after partitioning the HD was 6.96 GB of music. Where did I wasted all of that space? My HD is 185 GB.
Also, everytime I look at the used space, the bytes keep on changing. Does that means that every 20 seconds, the space is being taken away?

Not quite sure I understand your arithmetic. You started with a drive with a capacity of 185 GBs from which you created a Boot Camp partition of 32 GBs leaving 153 GBs. You then have your installed OS X and application software, and, I assume the pre-bundled software of about 16 GBs and 7 GBs of music which is 23 GBs leaving you with about 130 GBs of free space more or less.
OS X will continuously use disk space for cache files, temporary files, log files, VM files, safe sleep file, etc. So, at least based on what you've posted I don't see a problem.

Process "mdworker" Writes to Disk Every 10 Seconds

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