I/O activity on USB drive - what is?

[vrapp]

I have AC68P with USB3-connected external drive, used as network storage for the LAN, plus media server. I had it for years, and the drive was mostly idle, unless I actually was working with the files on it. But since a week or so, I hear it constantly doing something. Is there a way to find out what is it doing?
Trying to narrow it down, I already stopped Samba and Media server, but the activity is still going on.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Has this only started happening since you've installed the latest firmware? If so then you're probably suffering from this reported problem. IMHO this sounds more like a bug rather than intended behaviour. This is not something that Merlin can fix because it needs to be fixed by Asus in the upstream closed source module. Therefore people need to report it to Asus otherwise it won't get fixed.

 

[Viktor Jaep]

...or your drive is starting to go bad, and its constantly trying to read bad sectors over and over.

 

[vrapp]

Has this only started happening since you've installed the latest firmware? If so then you're probably suffering from this reported problem. IMHO this sounds more like a bug rather than intended behaviour. This is not something that Merlin can fix because it needs to be fixed by Asus in the upstream closed source module. Therefore people need to report it to Asus otherwise it won't get fixed.

Yes, that was it, thanks! I downgraded to 386.7.2 and the drive is quiet again.

...that said... I'm curious - if the issue was in constantly reading the same directory - doesn't Linux have i/o cache?

 

[ColinTaylor]

...that said... I'm curious - if the issue was in constantly reading the same directory - doesn't Linux have i/o cache?

The problem is that the USB drive is mounted in /tmp. So it's searching not only the local filesystem but the entire USB drive contents as well. I suspect this is an oversight and the intention was to only search the local filesystem (but that's just a guess).

 

[vrapp]

For the record, if anybody is experiencing this... After I downgraded the router, I no longer saw previously-connected AIMesh node (AC68r), which now had higher version of the firmware. I connected to the node by ethernet cable, and remarkably, it was in fact working, i.e. I was able to reach main router and internet. Still, I uploaded 386.7.2 and performed reset. After that the node could not be added to the main router. It was found, but trying to add it resulted in consistent failure. I finally was able to do it only after I connected main router with the node by ethernet cable.