Monitoring Disk activity for spindown idle time

[amplatfus]

Hi,

I have the spindown idle time set. I also have entware installed on the same disk with swap file too. Some time ago, after idle time passed, the disk entered in the idle time.

But from some time it doesn't any more, even I did not change the configuration at all.

And I want to find out what activity is causing this.
If someone has ideas I'm all ears!

Thank you so much!

 

[ColinTaylor]

Install the Entware lsof package and use it against the mount point of your USB drive.

Here we can see that apart from lsof itself the only other processes using the USB drive are tcextract2.sh and smbd.

# lsof +c 15 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM
COMMAND        PID  USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF   NODE NAME
tcextract2.sh 1585 admin   10r   REG    8,1      436 784051 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/ASUS/tcgraph/tcextract2.sh
smbd          6102 admin    2w   REG    8,1  4889505 783448 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/ASUS/log.samba
smbd          6102 admin   17w   REG    8,1  4889505 783448 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/ASUS/log.samba
lsof          9092 admin  txt    REG    8,1   146140 261581 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/bin/lsof
lsof          9092 admin  mem    REG    8,1   142752 261157 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/lib/ld-2.23.so
lsof          9092 admin  mem    REG    8,1    45272 261187 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1
lsof          9092 admin  mem    REG    8,1    92640 261134 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/lib/libpthread-2.23.so
lsof          9092 admin  mem    REG    8,1   130436 261578 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/lib/libtirpc.so.3.0.0
lsof          9092 admin  mem    REG    8,1  1215124 261160 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/lib/libc-2.23.so
lsof          9092 admin  mem    REG    8,1  2916416 261527 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
lsof          9093 admin  txt    REG    8,1   146140 261581 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/bin/lsof
lsof          9093 admin  mem    REG    8,1   142752 261157 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/lib/ld-2.23.so
lsof          9093 admin  mem    REG    8,1    45272 261187 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1
lsof          9093 admin  mem    REG    8,1    92640 261134 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/lib/libpthread-2.23.so
lsof          9093 admin  mem    REG    8,1   130436 261578 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/lib/libtirpc.so.3.0.0
lsof          9093 admin  mem    REG    8,1  1215124 261160 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/lib/libc-2.23.so
lsof          9093 admin  mem    REG    8,1  2916416 261527 /tmp/mnt/VERBATIM/entware/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive

 

[amplatfus]

Thank you @ColinTaylor

I installed and I can see a list of processes using the USB storage device. The next step is to identify which one is keeping the Disk on.
Because I see a lot of entware processes like in your example, but I had entware in the past and the Disk was spinning down when I was not using it.

Could you please advice on this too?
If I will found the reason, I will keep this thread updated.

Thank you!

 

[ColinTaylor]

Could you please advice on this too?

Sorry, I don't know anything about what processes you are running or how you're using them. It could be anything. For example, if you are sharing folders with Samba, a PC on the network could be stopping it spinning down. Or if you are writing to log files with something like Diversion that would do it.

 

[amplatfus]

In the meantime I found Iotop (http://guichaz.free.fr/iotop/). It is in repository but I did not manage to make it work.

After I found this:
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/iotop.14801/#post-99220

I will continue to find a way to identify what process reset the idle time starting few days ago. Before it was no problem. I did not change anything recently.

Thank you!

 

[amplatfus]

Hi,

As I promise, I am posting because I have found the root cause: a torrent file not saved corectly, a file which was remaining locked and did't allow the device to enter into sleep.

So now, even I have installed webserver and some other like php, mysql, torrent... the device is entering into sleep mode after idle time.


Thank you,
amplatfus

 

[amplatfus]

Hi again,

Just to write a little update. Now I changed from 380 to 384 NG and encounter same issue.
This time it was related to NZBGet. After I changed NzbDirInterval with = 0, spinning down works again.
I post here for futher referrence, maybe it will help others or me again in the future.

It checks only in NzbDir. You can either put it on flash or disable scanning via NzbDirInterval if you don't need automatic adding of files found in NzbDir.
Logging writes to disk too (if configured) but usually there are no loggable events when download queue is empty.

Source:https://forum.nzbget.net/viewtopic.php?t=2310#p15284

All the best,
amplatfus