what cron job in Ubuntu would burn the hard disk and occupy a system for 10 minutes

[Paul Johnson]

Almost every time time I start my laptop, I notice the cpu indicator go high and the hard disk activity indicator stays
on for quite a while. It is not caused by something I'm doing, in the output of top it appears some program is using
"find" and it is driving the disk crazy. It is coming out of cron, or anacron, I'm pretty sure.

In the output from "ps aux" I see these lines, but I can't figure out what they are doing. Do you know? As far as I
know, I've turned off slocate, beagle, and every other automagical file scanning/indexing thing they try to sneak in
with each release, but this one has me stumped.
Perhaps locate re-insinuated itself?

nobody 3701 0.0 0.0 5028 1860 ? SN 21:12 0:00 su nobody -s /bin/sh -c /usr/bin/find / -ignore_readdi
r_race \( -fstype NFS -o -fstype nfs -o -fstype nfs4 -o -fstype afs -o -fstype binfmt_misc -o -fstype proc -o -fst
ype smbfs -o -fstype autofs -o -fstype iso9660 -o -fstype ncpfs -o -fstype coda -o -fstype devpts -o -fstype ftpfs -o -
fstype devfs -o -fstype mfs -o -fstype shfs -o -fstype sysfs -o -fstype cifs -o -fstype lustre_lite -o -fstype tmpfs -o
-fstype usbfs -o -fstype udf -o -fstype ocfs2 -o -type d -regex '\(^/tmp$\)\|\(^/usr/tmp$\)\|\(^/var/tmp$\)\|\(^/
afs$\)\|\(^/amd$\)\|\(^/alex$\)\|\(^/var/spool$\)\|\(^/sfs$\)\|\(^/media$\)\|\(^/var/lib/schroot/mount$\)' \) -prune -o
-print0
nobody 3716 0.0 0.0 1748 492 ? SN 21:12 0:00 sh -c /usr/bin/find / -ignore_readdir_race \( -fs
type NFS -o -fstype nfs -o -fstype nfs4 -o -fstype afs -o -fstype binfmt_misc -o -fstype proc -o -fstype smbfs -o -fsty
pe autofs -o -fstype iso9660 -o -fstype ncpfs -o -fstype coda -o -fstype devpts -o -fstype ftpfs -o -fstype devfs -o -f
stype mfs -o -fstype shfs -o -fstype sysfs -o -fstype cifs -o -fstype lustre_lite -o -fstype tmpfs -o -fstype usbfs -o
-fstype udf -o -fstype ocfs2 -o -type d -regex '\(^/tmp$\)\|\(^/usr/tmp$\)\|\(^/var/tmp$\)\|\(^/afs$\)\|\(^/amd$\)
\|\(^/alex$\)\|\(^/var/spool$\)\|\(^/sfs$\)\|\(^/media$\)\|\(^/var/lib/schroot/mount$\)' \) -prune -o -print0
nobody 3717 6.4 0.0 3588 1336 ? DN 21:12 0:08 /usr/bin/find / -ignore_readdir_race ( -fstype NFS -o
-fstype nfs -o -fstype nfs4 -o -fstype afs -o -fstype binfmt_misc -o -fstype proc -o -fstype smbfs -o -fstype autofs -o
-fstype iso9660 -o -fstype ncpfs -o -fstype coda -o -fstype devpts -o -fstype ftpfs -o -fstype devfs -o -fstype mfs -o
-fstype shfs -o -fstype sysfs -o -fstype cifs -o -fstype lustre_lite -o -fstype tmpfs -o -fstype usbfs -o -fstype udf
-o -fstype ocfs2 -o -type d -regex \(^/tmp$\)\|\(^/usr/tmp$\)\|\(^/var/tmp$\)\|\(^/afs$\)\|\(^/amd$\)\|\(^/alex$\)\|\(^
/var/spool$\)\|\(^/sfs$\)\|\(^/media$\)\|\(^/var/lib/schroot/mount$\) ) -prune -o -print0

--
Paul E. Johnson email: paul...@ku.edu
Professor, Political Science http://pj.freefaculty.org
1541 Lilac Lane, Rm 504
University of Kansas Office: (785) 864-9086
Lawrence, Kansas 66044-3177 FAX: (785) 864-5700

[Jeff Schaller]

It looks a lot like a locate-related updatedb process to me. Try tracking the parent PID down ("ps jax | grep find" and then get grep again on the parent PID). I don't have a running instance of Ubuntu, but check /etc/crontab and /etc/cron.d/* for something named updatedb or *locate*.

-jeff

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[gladi...@gmail.com]

Paul,

Your system is probably using anacron. From anacron(8):

[...] Unlike cron(8), it does not assume that the machine
is running continuously. Hence, it can be used on machines that
aren't
running 24 hours a day, to control daily, weekly, and monthly jobs
that
are usually controlled by cron [...]

So, what you're seeing is anacron catching up on its tasks from when
the system wasn't online. So, that's the source of what you're
seeing. As far as what you can do about it, I would suggest pruning
your cron.daily scripts--maybe move some of them to the monthly
directory or some such thing.

-S