Slow hard disk access --- still wonky

Question

Hi,
Recently i've noticed that hard disk access has become very laggy, to the point
where it's driving me crazy.
For example, if i want to tab-complete through my directories, i have to wait a
few seconds each time.  Similarly with saving files in vim, or just using
firefox, which seems to suffer frequent hangs while the disk is spinning.
I tried downgrading the kernel to 3.4.something, to no avail (it definitely used
to work just fine with the old kernels).  I've also tried adding "commit=60" to
my fstab to reduce journalling access.
I ran bonnie++ and the following results came back:
Version 1.03e ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
mattdell 7672M 102163 88 106118 6 38973 3 83155 67 124734 4 207.5 0
------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
-Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++
mattdell,7672M,102163,88,106118,6,38973,3,83155,67,124734,4,207.5,0,16,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++
t
which (by comparison with other results i've seen online) seem to indicate
there's nothing particularly wrong with the disk (it's a toshiba 7200rpm, i
think).
So i'm at a bit of a loss what to do next.  I've attached my dmesg output.  If
anyone has any suggestions, that would be awesome.
Dmesg output: http://pastebin.com/kJcbZVBT
Thanks,
Matt
Last edited by yourealwaysbe (2012-11-11 14:41:24)

Answer 1

Arf -- i noticed firefox was still laggy last night, and on a (second or third) reboot this morning, things are back to being laggy even without having run firefox...
I'm not sure where to look, but here's the output of mount if that will be of any use:
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
sys on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
dev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=1962404k,nr_inodes=490601,mode=755)
run on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,mode=755)
/dev/sda3 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,mode=755)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,release_agent=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-cgroups-agent,name=systemd)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuset)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuacct,cpu)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/memory type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,memory)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/devices type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,freezer)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,net_cls)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,blkio)
systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=27,pgrp=1,timeout=300,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct)
hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime)
mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,relatime)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,relatime)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext2 (rw,relatime)
/dev/sda4 on /home type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
All suggestions appreciated
edit: also, nothing untoward reported by top (i don't think):
top - 15:52:02 up 16 min, 0 users, load average: 0.36, 0.41, 0.30
Tasks: 104 total, 2 running, 102 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 0.1 us, 0.2 sy, 0.0 ni, 99.8 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem: 3930516 total, 779240 used, 3151276 free, 51616 buffers
KiB Swap: 2626620 total, 0 used, 2626620 free, 285284 cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1 root 20 0 32552 3432 1924 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.51 systemd
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.04 ksoftirqd/0
4 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.14 kworker/0:0
5 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/0:0H
7 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/u:0H
8 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
9 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
10 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
The lag tends to occur when first tabbing into a directory.  On the second time
tabbing through things seem to be fast -- i guess that's cached somewhere.
editedit: i also tried switching back to initscripts, with no improvement, so i guess systemd is off the hook for the remaining problems
Last edited by yourealwaysbe (2012-11-11 15:13:57)