hdd activity every five seconds or so

[mm_half3]

Hello,

My newly operational freeNAS build (intel Avoton with six HGST Deskstar NAS sata disks for the data pool) is accessing the data pool/volume about every five seconds...at least I hear the hdd's clicking for about two seconds in about five second intervals. Found a few other posts on cyclic hdd activity when the system data pool should be idle that indicated this could be the .system dataset; so I migrated my installation from a USB stick to a 60GB SSD, then moved the system dataset to the free_NAS boot device, hoping this would stop the cyclic activity...however, nojoy...still getting the cyclic hdd activity.

The only services active are: smb; smart; ssh and ftp. No plugins installed or jails setup. The odd thing is that iostat is only showing activity on the SSD boot device (ad6)

root@titanium:~ # iostat -d -n7 6

ada0 ada1 ada2 ada3 ada4 ada5 ada6

KB/t tps MB/s KB/t tps MB/s KB/t tps MB/s KB/t tps MB/s KB/t tps MB/s KB/t tps MB/s KB/t tps MB/s

30.59 0 0.00 26.54 0 0.00 20.82 0 0.00 27.63 0 0.00 26.36 0 0.00 20.12 0 0.00 33.55 8 0.28

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 5.23 10 0.05

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 8.79 12 0.10

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 17.89 14 0.24

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 19.95 18 0.35

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 21.27 21 0.45

0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 0.00 0 0.00 32.41 29 0.93


Any ideas on what might be causing the cyclic hdd activity? Guess I could disable the services one by one to see if any of those were causing the activity.

Thanks,

 

[dlavigne]

Check the location of the system dataset: http://doc.freenas.org/11/system.html#system-dataset.

 

[mm_half3]

its on the boot device:

df -h freenas-boot/.system

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on

freenas-boot/.system 53G 444M 53G 1% /var/db/system

 

[BigDave]

Found a few other posts on cyclic hdd activity when the system data pool should be idle that indicated this could be the .system dataset; so I migrated my installation from a USB stick to a 60GB SSD, then moved the system dataset to the free_NAS boot device,

Since changing the location of the system dataset, have you re-booted the machine? If not, give that a try.

 

[mm_half3]

system was rebooted, and no change in hdd activity.