Applications and GNOME3 freeze during heavy disk writes

[maxibuntu]

Hi,

Every morning, about 15 minutes after I started the computer I experience a freeze of Icewesael and/or Icedove. I can still switch to other applications. At the same time there is a lot of disk writing. After two or three minutes the applications 'unlock' and the freeze is over.

But, sometimes matters get worse and my Gnome3 desktop also freezes at the same time. In that case a Crtl+Alt+Backspace is the only option left.

I can't really pinpoint the problem, but maybe it has to do with (ana)cron rotating the logs. I'm still trying to figure that out. I added 'nice -19' to /etc/cron.daily/logrotate but that doesn't fix the problem. So it does seem to be a problem with heavy disk writes freezing some applications, and not with limited processor power.

Is anyone experiencing the same problem, or does anyone have a solution?

I'm running LMDE with UP6.

[wavespot]

A computer freeze could be due to a million reason.... If you can, try to run 'iostat 1' while your system is slow, you'll see if your hard drive is a good culprit.

Check tps column and iowait value, which will show you the time your system wait for an I/O operation and the number of op. it currently handle. It happened to me once : to solve that I moved a lot of file to a SSD drive and bought a 7200 RPM hard drive. No issue since then.

[Monsta]

This article may be of some help: http://rudd-o.com/en/linux-and-free-sof ... o-fix-that

I also suggest checking your drive using GSmartControl.

[maxibuntu]

Thanx for your replies, but I already know the problem comes up during a disk write, no need for iostat. And it is not general slowness I'm complaining about, everything runs fine except for the few minutes every morning.

I don't think it is a hardware issue, because I have another computer with completey different hardware that does the same thing. So it must be an LMDE or Wheezy specific configuration issue. Or maybe a Mozilla issue, because it happens only in Iceweasel and Icedove, but I can use other applications.

Some process is creating havoc for a few minutes, but I can't pinpoint the problem because there is nothing in the logs at the time of the disk write

I'll try running Chromium for a day and see if the problem arises. And I'll check with atop.

[yoodoohai]

Actually i confirm this with Linux Mint 13 Mate Debian Edition.
The System freezes after using it for a while (in my case some hours) when an application does heavy i/o.

iotop shows 100% for several minutes, somestimes the sytem even stays unusable. It often happens with chromium, which tends to use the harddisk a lot for caching.

i searched the web for quite a while now, but no real answer. im my case, resarting chromium helps for a while, or restarting the system.

3.2.0-38-generic (#61-Ubuntu SMP Tue Feb 19 12:18:21 UTC 2013) /also appaered with other kernels...
Genuine Intel(R) CPU U4100 @ 1.30GHz
flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm xsave lahf_lm dtherm

Memory 1934 MiB

this seems to be a linux mint debian problem, as with aptosid (also a rolling debian distro) this problem does not occur.