Thanks to all who responded. The flashing light turned out to be showing network activity. I had switch ports on the motherboard and this one has an indicator light on the front of the box. <dope slaps self> On Ubuntu sar comes packaged as atsar. I will be looking at that further as time permits. It looks real interesting. That suggestion along with vmstat has set me down some useful paths via google. I will say that I really like ubuntu dapper as a server. Add vmware to it and it will allow me to shutdown some systems and simplify my life. For a desktop OpenSuse 10.2 is quite nice. I am not meaning to start any distro wars; I'm just saying... Peace, Mike Leo wrote:

I learned about "sar" last night due to a server outage...check it out.

I think it will server your purpose

----- Original Message ---- From: Andy Stewart To: Worcester Linux Users Group Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 5:42:55 PM Subject: Re: [Wlug] System diagnostics

Michael Long wrote:

...

Hi All,

...

I just install Ubuntu 6.06 lts. With the box up and running it appears that there is disk activity because the light on the case is active. However running top shows the box is basically idle (CPU < 1%) and "ps aux" shows nothing unusual. I do not claim to be a sys admin however so I may not be interpreting things correctly. The fans seem to be working harder than before as well.

...

What command line tools should I be looking at determine the health of the machine and drives. The os is on an IDE drive and I have a raid (MegaRAID) for the other drive.

...

I know this is a bit vague but I am not sure where to start. I have been using opensuse but now I do not have x or the other tools that come bundled with kde.

...

Thanks, Mike

HI Mike,

Here's what I would try:

a) Are you sure that the disk activity light on the case is properly wired to your MB? Is the light constantly on, or does it flicker?

b) unplug the network cable to insure that the disk activity isn't caused by something on the network

c) If you are sufficiently patient and wait, does the activity stop (say in 5-10 minute)?

d) What happens if you run "tail -f /var/log/messages" as root ? Lots of messages here could cause disk activity.

I'm sure other folks with have other ideas, but that's my 2cents, devalued for inflation.

HTH,

Andy

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