linux: Disk acces lites cnstntly blinkin - evn wen no actvty

[bdb4269x]

I have three redhat servers and 2 of them's disk access lites blink normally, when (and how much) you would expect them to. The third ones disk access lights blink all the time. I'd estimate atleast once a second every second, even if there in nothing going on at all. brbrI have no idea where to start looking to figure out why - and I'm not even sure if I should worry about it or not. brbrCan anybody help?

[puppynut5]

A lot of time if the light is on like that it could mean that there is a bent pin or that the cable isnt hooked in right to the mother board. Just an idea...

[bdb4269x]

Originally Posted by puppynut5

divA lot of time if the light is on like that it could mean that there is a bent pin or that the cable isnt hooked in right to the mother board. Just an idea.../div

brbr I'm pretty sure thats not the cause. The constant blinking is very steady - not the usual seemingly random blinks you'd expect from normal diskactivity, or from a hinky connection - it literally just blinks at perfectly (as far as I can makeout) spaced intervals of about 1 second. Note - it does also have the normal random spurts of blinks - it's just when nothings going on on the server and the other blinks die down that you can really make out the steadiness of this constant blink. br

[puppynut5]

Hmmm. is it still functioning or has the hard disk crashed?

[bdb4269x]

Originally Posted by puppynut5

Hmmm. is it still functioning or has the hard disk crashed?

brbr The server is running fine - there are no other obvious symptoms other that the disk access lights blinking. I have a suspision that it may not have to do with disk access though.brbrThese servers have 2 disk RAID1 arrays - I was looking in the adaptec RAID array manager utility, on the server in question, trying to see if any thing looked hinky and when I was looking in the help it said one of the actions you could perform (through a right click context menu) on a physical device was called "Blink". Which it said would make the light corresponding to that physical device blink. Though it did say that not all options would always be available. Which seemed to be the case because it didn't appear on the context menu for the drives and I couldn't find any other way to enable/disable this blinking thing. But it makes me wonder if somehow this blinking is "activated" on thed rives and I just can't find the option to disable it. brbrThe steadiness of the blinking makes me suspicious that this "blink" option could be the cause -- but it seems that if the blinking was enabled I should be able to find the option to disable it (there is not much to the adaptec utility if you get my meaning -- too bare for obscure options to be very "buried") -- which makes me think that it's not the cause.brbrWhat do you think? Is there any process that might access the disk every second when it refreshes or something? brbrAlso - everything that is running on this server is also running on the other two except the other two also have other things running (one of the other two has a LOT more running) and both of their disk access lights blink normally. brbrAny ideas where I should go from here?br

[puppynut5]

The only thing that might be accessing the disk every second is maybe a virus... I have no idea about the blink that you are talking about. I have RAID0 set up not RAID1 so I dont' if that makes any difference.. Sorry I couldn't be any more help man.

[GameMaker]

On my Debian GNU/Linux desktop/server, I had to disable the KDED Media Manager because it was accessing the disk regularly which made the disk activity light flash on a regular basis.

So, things to check:

1) daemons that watch for media changes (pmount, hal) or file/directory changes (famd - file alteration monitor). Maybe one of these is polling the disk every second to look for changes?

2) some process that writes a log message every second, though I don't know what that would be.

What is different about the server with the blinking disk activity light as compared to the other two? Do they all have the same OS version? Do they all have the same packages installed? Does one boot into a GUI and the others to the command line? Does "top" show the same active processes on all three systems?

[bdb4269x]

The servers should be identical - they where all ordered at the same time from Premio. These arn't my home box's - they are at my work, so there isn't really anything running on them media-wise. The main thing thats different about the server in questiosn from the other 2 is that it's hardly used for anything compared to the other 2. (and it does have ProFTP running - but I've tried stopping that to see if it had any effect - and it didn't) There are all running Redhat ES3 -- They do all boot to gui -- but the packages may not all be exactly the same. -- However...brbrSince my last post I got gkrellm and whatched the disk monitor along with the blinking and - there is atleast 4-6 blinks between every time the disk monitor showed any access. (It blinks every seocnd --- while the disk monitor (with the box idle) was only showing ~20K activity on the disk every 4-6 seconds. (Other 2 servers showed similar disk activity when idle)) -- So as far as I can tell - the disk is not actually being accessed abnormally -- and the blinking is not corresponding to disk access.brbrSo I'm thinking more and more - that my suspicion (discribed in my "span class="postdetails"Apr 11, 2006 2:11 pm" post) about the adaptec Blink option - must be true.brbrI'm going to look around the adaptec ustility a bit more and see if I can find an option to diable the blinking option -- and if I can't find it - I think I'm just going to ignore it, as not important.brbrDoes this like a reasonable course of action? br/span