Re: mysterious disk access every 5 or 10 seconds

["Sourav K. Mandal" <smandal mit edu>]

"Yung-Hsiang Lu <luyung@yahoo.com>" wrote:

> I could not find the source code.  Does anybody
> know wheret to get the source code? I would like to
> see whether I can do anything about it.

If you installed magicdev from RPM, you should be able to install 
the SRPM as well.  This will provide the code and the RPM spec file. 
 For finer control, you may wish to copy things from the CVS server. 
 Try "http://cvs.gnome.org/lxr/source/magicdev/" ...

> Also, I did not find a good way to kill magicdev
> (other than "kill").  

You could try "killall magicdev" ... 'killall' accepts nearly the 
same arguments as your standard 'kill' ...

> I did "grep -r magicdev *" in
> /etc and the only file was
> /etc/CORBA/servers/magicdev.goad.  This doesn't seem
> to be the right place to configure or disable
> magicdev.

If you installed from RPM, try "rpm -ql magicdev" ... you should see 
that the only peripheral it can handle right now is the CD.  If you 
go to your GNOME control-center, then Peripherals, then CD, you 
should be able to turn off the auto-checking functions.  I have it 
set this way, and magicdev does not seem to be running.

You are right, IRQs are more hardware kosher, but perhaps security 
is an issue.  Can anyone more knowledgeable add anything?

Sourav Mandal

------------------------------------------------------------
Sourav K. Mandal

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Physics
http://web.mit.edu/smandal/www/

"In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than
efflorescence of language. We must be simple, 
precise, terse."

                      -- Edgar Allan Poe, 
                        "The Poetic Principle"