ext4-dio-unwrit / ext4lazyinit processes

[BillWho]

Hi all,

I just formatted a partition ext4 and there's a lot of disk activity when it's mounted. I also noticed these processes running that I haven't encountered before.

If I umount the partition, the disk activity stops. I googled these processes, but there's no explanation - only the reference to them causing high disk activity.

If anyone knows what's going on here, I'd appreciate the enlightenment.

Thanks in advance
_________________
Good luck

Since installing gentoo, my life has become one long emerge

[nephros]

ext4 has the feature of "lazy init" which basically means formatting doesn't complete when mkfs finishes, but that some of the formatting gets done upon first mount.

See man mke2fs for (some) details.

So don't worry, leave the fs mounted, and after some time those kernel threads should go away and load/wait state should behave normally.
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Please put [SOLVED] in your topic if you are a moron.

[BillWho]

nephros,

Thanks for your response and for pointing me to man mke2fs. I should learn to reference the man pages more often

As it was a few days ago that I encountered this anomaly, I did let it run its course and, sure enough, the activity returned to normal in about half an hour.

The last time I formatted a partition was about a year ago and I don't remember this happening - or, I just didn't pay attention

Thanks again
_________________
Good luck

Since installing gentoo, my life has become one long emerge