Cygwin Emacs and two other Cygwin processes seem to do a lot of "other" I/O while seemingly idle

Cygwin Emacs and two other Cygwin processes seem to do a lot of "other" I/O while seemingly idle

[KARR, DAVID]

Win7x32, Cygwin 1.7.25, Emacs 24.3.1.

I've noticed when I scan the processes in SysInternals Process Explorer and sort by "I/O Delta Other Bytes", my Cygwin Emacs process is almost always at the top of the list.  In fact, the next processes in that sorted order are "at-spi-bus-launcher" and "at-spi2-registryd", both also from Cygwin.  The total from everything else in the list, again for the "I/O Delta Other Bytes" value, is just a fraction of the total from these three processes.

This is happening when Emacs is seemingly idle.

I'm not sure what "Other" is, compared to read or write.  At the current time, when I see it at the top of that sorted list, I don't see the disk light flashing a lot, and my cpu indicator is pretty low.  Also at the current time, I have four shell buffers open, all of which are just sitting at the shell prompt (these are all that show up in "list-processes").

However, I'm constantly annoyed with performance problems on my laptop, so I'm wondering whether this is having any impact.

This may be considered "trivial" or expected behavior, I'd just like to understand it a bit.

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RE: Cygwin Emacs and two other Cygwin processes seem to do a lot of "other" I/O while seemingly idle

[KARR, DAVID]

> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Friday, October 18, 2013 11:20 AM
> Subject: Cygwin Emacs and two other Cygwin processes seem to do a lot of
> "other" I/O while seemingly idle
> 
> Win7x32, Cygwin 1.7.25, Emacs 24.3.1.
> 
> I've noticed when I scan the processes in SysInternals Process Explorer and
> sort by "I/O Delta Other Bytes", my Cygwin Emacs process is almost always at
> the top of the list.  In fact, the next processes in that sorted order are
> "at-spi-bus-launcher" and "at-spi2-registryd", both also from Cygwin.  The
> total from everything else in the list, again for the "I/O Delta Other Bytes"
> value, is just a fraction of the total from these three processes.
> 
> This is happening when Emacs is seemingly idle.
> 
> I'm not sure what "Other" is, compared to read or write.  At the current
> time, when I see it at the top of that sorted list, I don't see the disk
> light flashing a lot, and my cpu indicator is pretty low.  Also at the
> current time, I have four shell buffers open, all of which are just sitting
> at the shell prompt (these are all that show up in "list-processes").
> 
> However, I'm constantly annoyed with performance problems on my laptop, so
> I'm wondering whether this is having any impact.
> 
> This may be considered "trivial" or expected behavior, I'd just like to
> understand it a bit.

I'm continuing to see this problem.  I find that when my system is very sluggish, if I check total IO, those three processes are at the top of the list, and this is when I'm not doing anything directly with Cygwin.  At this point, if I kill my Emacs, rxvt, and X server, my performance improves considerably.


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Re: Cygwin Emacs and two other Cygwin processes seem to do a lot of "other" I/O while seemingly idle

[Václav Zeman]

On 11/01/2013 07:15 PM, KARR, DAVID wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> Sent: Friday, October 18, 2013 11:20 AM
>> Subject: Cygwin Emacs and two other Cygwin processes seem to do a lot of
>> "other" I/O while seemingly idle
>>
>> Win7x32, Cygwin 1.7.25, Emacs 24.3.1.
>>
>> I've noticed when I scan the processes in SysInternals Process Explorer and
>> sort by "I/O Delta Other Bytes", my Cygwin Emacs process is almost always at
>> the top of the list.  In fact, the next processes in that sorted order are
>> "at-spi-bus-launcher" and "at-spi2-registryd", both also from Cygwin.  The
>> total from everything else in the list, again for the "I/O Delta Other Bytes"
>> value, is just a fraction of the total from these three processes.
>>
>> This is happening when Emacs is seemingly idle.
>>
>> I'm not sure what "Other" is, compared to read or write.  At the current
>> time, when I see it at the top of that sorted list, I don't see the disk
>> light flashing a lot, and my cpu indicator is pretty low.  Also at the
>> current time, I have four shell buffers open, all of which are just sitting
>> at the shell prompt (these are all that show up in "list-processes").
>>
>> However, I'm constantly annoyed with performance problems on my laptop, so
>> I'm wondering whether this is having any impact.
>>
>> This may be considered "trivial" or expected behavior, I'd just like to
>> understand it a bit.
> 
> I'm continuing to see this problem.  I find that when my system is very sluggish, if I check total IO, those three processes are at the top of the list, and this is when I'm not doing anything directly with Cygwin.  At this point, if I kill my Emacs, rxvt, and X server, my performance improves considerably.
> 
You could try running the emacs under strace to see what is going on in it.

-- 
VZ


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