top for hard disk usage

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Thu, 2008-05-15 at 19:15 -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> David Timms wrote:
> > What tool can tell me why my hard disk light is essentially on, 
> > performing continuous access ?
> > 
> > top doesn't seem to show the culprit since it mustn't use enough CPU.
> > 
> > Fedora 9 i386 if it matters.
> > 
> > Also, is there similar for network ?
> > 
> Is there a tool which will allow me to track io by process? I can do it 
> by putting a printk in the kernel, rebuilding, and wading through MB of 
> logs, but what I want is a way to find out which process or kthread is 
> writing to my disk when the system is dead idle.
> 
> Of course the logging operation causes disk i/o... so it's kind of ugly 
> to use.

In the Old Days (tm) there used to be a utility called iostat, but it
seems to have joined the 'eavenly choir eternal.

poc