PROC-3614 - Processes waiting for IO

This information is provided as part of the Lynis community project. It is related to Lynis control PROC-3614 and should be considered as-is and without guarantees. Any advice and commands should be tested before implementing them in production environments.

Control details
CategoryProcesses
Application

Description

This control checks if there are processes waiting for IO requests to finish. The availability and performance of a system might be in danger when it occurs too often. High IO might be caused due to high disk activity or in some cases network issues (high bandwidth usage, unstable connectivity).

How to solve

Check with the ps binary what processes are having IO requests waiting. Optionally use sysstat or a similar tool set to monitor for recurrences.

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About

Lynis is a technical security auditing tool for Unix flavors like Linux, macOS, AIX, Solaris, and *BSD. It is open source software and free to use. Typical usage include system hardening, compliance testing, and vulnerability scanning. The project has an active community, including development via GitHub.

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