Greetings;

In watching the write traffic into /dev/hdd, where my vtapes are located, I'm 
seeing, particularly for the larger sized dle's, a write pattern that 
resembles a picket fence in the gkrellm display.  I have 60 some GB of 
holding disk, the reserved is set for about 30%, and the largest dle is less 
than the size of a vtape as set in the tapetype. Total data is about 46GB.

It seems to me that when a dle has been collected into the holding disk, then 
a taper should fire up and just dma the data from the holding disk to the 
vtape, but I'm seeing writes of less than 10KB, interspersed with 55MB, 
reported by the gkrellm utility display.  hdparm says the disk is about a 
75MB/Sec disk. 

The data comes from, and the holding disk is on /dev/hda, and the vtapes are 
on /dev/hdd.

I'm using the CFQ I/O scheduler if that is a data point.

How best can I troubleshoot this?

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
All newspaper editorial writers ever do is come down from the hills after
the battle is over and shoot the wounded.