Re: Large Partition Disks Freezing

[Magnus Eriksson <magetoo%fastmail.fm@localhost>]

On Fri, 25 Mar 2011, Nathan Staley wrote:

> The database is to be stored on external disks.  Some times, the system 
> runs as expected, but often, it the disks seem to lock up.

A few more stabs in the dark:

External disks - are they connected via USB?  (Please let the answer be 
"no".)  I had some weird issues with a 2.5" Seagate drive when it was 
plugged into a sufficiently lousy cheap hub, and IIRC the symptoms were 
sort of similar to what you describe.  (I could usually umount -f and 
remount though.)


Or are they of the modern sort that spin down after they haven't been 
accessed in a while?  (If so, can you force a lockup with "scsictl sdN 
stop"?  Can you restart them with "scsictl sdN start" when they spin 
down?)

On the other hand, PostgreSQL on my system is constantly accessing disks 
even when nothing is happening, so that should keep them up...


MAgnus