I believe it controls the short-cut buttons on the scanner.

OK, i never use them anyway, only through the programmes on my beloved G4 and they work. :)

If you want to keep these enhancements going, you might look into the preferences, and thin-out what you are asking them to do. I'm not familiar with DropDrawers, and I had discontinued DragThing until this most recent version which I am trying out again but: 1) If you are using the Window's Dock in DT, and asking it to update the names of the windows, that is asking for constant activity from DT; 2) if you have the process dock going, that is also asking for constant activity. 3) Similarly for 'Highlight running applications, Put the Trash on the Desktop, and Translucency settings. For CodeTek Virtual Desktop: (1) If you are using Mouse Focus, or (2) Switch Desktops using the Mouse, these no doubt require constant attention. (3) The frequency of updating the pager also affects attention to system events. (4) The complexity of the settings in the Applications Pane also probably plays a role.

I'm not sure why any of these would be causing a 'write' to the disk, but they would all require that significant attention be paid to system and application events. I don't notice the writing activity which you mentioned from these, but I do notice the system activity (open, read, close, of preferences, and CACHE_HIT from fs_usage). Where did you find the information about the writes?

I find CodeTeK to be very responsive, and Virtual Desktop to be very well-written and very useful. I'm sure they'll get to the bottom of whatever there is to get to the bottom of, and quickly.
---------------------
If everything else is quiet, I get cupsd activity once per second or so, and that is almost it, but again, it is not a write.

I am back at work. At home with everything quiet (nothing running but the Terminal), fs_usage shows only a cupsd every second or so and very little else. Here at work with everything as quiet, fs_usage shows about 80 lines per second of CACHE_HIT for the WindowServer. Here are 4 lines:

09:34:18 CACHE_HIT 0.000028 WindowServer
09:34:18 CACHE_HIT 0.000008 WindowServer
09:34:18 CACHE_HIT 0.000007 WindowServer
09:34:18 CACHE_HIT 0.000007 WindowServer

They *almost* cycle like that with about twenty sets of 4 (the 0.000028, 0.000008, 0.000007, 0.000007)

When I look in the Activity Monitor, it shows only the Dock, the Finder, the Terminal (with login, tsch, and fs_usage as children), Activity Monitor (with pmTool as a child), AppleSpell, and SystemUIServer. Only Terminal and Activity Monitor have children. I have no 3rd party PreferencePanes installed...no nothing that I can recall.

With 'top' and nothing else running, WindowServer uses sometimes 0.0, sometimes 0.9, sometimes 1.8% of the CPU.

There are only the occasional error in WindowServer.log:
Nov 14 08:31:53 [395] CGXPerformInitialDisplayConfiguration
Nov 14 08:31:53 [395] Display 0x42741c0: MappedDisplay Unit 0; Vendor 0x610 Model 0x9d07 S/N 0; online enabled built-in (0,0)[1152 x 864], base addr 0xb0018000
Nov 14 08:31:53 [395] Display 0x41dc9d00: VirtualDisplay Unit 0; Vendor 0x756e6b6e Model 0x76697274 S/N 0; offline enabled built-in (2176,0)[1 x 1], base addr 0xb0015000
Nov 14 08:31:54 [395] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXSetWindowListTags: Operation on a window 0x1 not owned by caller SecurityAgent
Nov 14 08:31:55 [395] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXOrderWindow: Operation on a window 0x1 not owned by caller SecurityAgent
Nov 14 08:32:04 [395] kCGErrorFailure: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "SystemUIServer" for over 1 second. Server has re-enabled them.
Nov 14 08:32:35 [395] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXPostEventByConnection: invalid connection


The only difference I can think of is that this machine has Quartz Extreme and the one at home does not.

1) What is going on here;
and
2) If it is natural, why does it not happen at home?

OT, but this cracked me up.
:)

macmath:
- have a look in your startup items
- remember what is in there and where (take notes)
- clear out the entire list
- logout and back in

If your problem is now gone, as it was with me, you can narrow it down to one of the appliactions starting at login.
This way I found the HP Manager doing the weird things with my log file.
I hope it helps.

I have nothing in my login items. I used to, but prior to my last post, I removed everything and restarted. The activity still persists.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

I should have mentioned that I had already stripped all of the four desktop applications down to the most basic functions of providing simply switchable desktops (ala Linux) or giving me simply a pop-out shelf to put items into.

Especially with DragThing, I disabled everything else it could do besides that, and still got the excessive disk writes.

The writes are displayed in the Activity Monitor panel at about 2 to 8 per second, at about 20 to 80kb per. You can watch the disk capacity very slowly but constantly lowering, with an idle system.

I did receive an email from a CodeTek engineer who said there was a bug and be sure I was using the latest version, which I am, having received it the day before.

I just shut down and then booted in Safe-Mode, but not bothering to hold down the Shift key while logging in. The CACHE-HITs on WindowServer were gone from fs_usage, except when I actually moved a window. I have just restarted and they are back. So I guess I am looking at something system-installed, not user-installed.

How do I open the windowserver.log file in Console, it's 3.5MB, can access others, but can't get it to display?

CodeTek has asked for a copy to check out.

finally, after 26 hours of speculation, we get to see the real errors and the cause of your constant disk activity ?

learn how to use the file pager 'less'; use it to browse the file:

$ sudo less /var/log/windowserver.log

hmm, that logfile is secure, here:

$ ll /var/log/windowserver.log
-rw-r----- 1 root wheel - 24K 14 Nov 15:12 /var/log/windowserver.log

so, need a sudo to view it unless you're in the group wheel.

Here is portion of yesterday's WindowServer.log after a restart, and apparently after starting up and quitting DropDrawers. Seems it starts an endless process, the log continued where I cut off endlessly:

Nov 13 21:33:39 [5941] CGXPerformInitialDisplayConfiguration
Nov 13 21:33:39 [5941] Display 0x42702c0: MappedDisplay Unit 0; Vendor 0x610 Model 0x9c0b S/N 0; online enabled built-in (0,0)[1024 x 768], base addr 0xb0018000
Nov 13 21:33:39 [5941] Display 0x3f003d: MappedDisplay Unit 1; Vendor 0xffffffff Model 0xffffffff S/N -1; offline enabled (2048,0)[1 x 1], base addr 0xb0819000
Nov 13 21:33:39 [5941] Display 0x41dc9d00: VirtualDisplay Unit 0; Vendor 0x756e6b6e Model 0x76697274 S/N 0; offline enabled built-in (2049,0)[1 x 1], base addr 0xb0015000
Nov 13 21:33:40 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXSetWindowListTags: Operation on a window 0x1 not owned by caller SecurityAgent
Nov 13 21:33:41 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXOrderWindow: Operation on a window 0x1 not owned by caller SecurityAgent
Nov 13 21:33:54 [5941] kCGErrorFailure: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "SystemUIServer" for over 1 second. Server has re-enabled them.
Nov 13 21:34:09 [5941] kCGErrorFailure: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Finder" for over 1 second. Server has re-enabled them.
Nov 13 21:34:11 [5941] kCGErrorFailure: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Drop Drawers X" for over 1 second. Server has re-enabled them.
Nov 13 21:34:13 [5941] kCGErrorFailure: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Finder" for over 1 second. Server has re-enabled them.
Nov 13 21:34:13 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:13 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:13 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:13 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:13 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:14 [5941] kCGErrorFailure: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Drop Drawers X" for over 1 second. Server has re-enabled them.
Nov 13 21:34:16 [5941] kCGErrorFailure: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Finder" for over 1 second. Server has re-enabled them.
Nov 13 21:34:17 [5941] kCGErrorFailure: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Drop Drawers X" for over 1 second. Server has re-enabled them.
Nov 13 21:34:20 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:20 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:20 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:20 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:30 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:34:31 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:34:31 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:34:32 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:34:32 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:34:33 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:34:35 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:34:35 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:35 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:35 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:35 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:50 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:50 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:50 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:34:50 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:05 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:05 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:05 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:05 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:11 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:12 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:12 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:13 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:14 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:14 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:15 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:15 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:16 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXPostEventByConnection: invalid connection
Nov 13 21:35:20 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:20 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:20 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:20 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:28 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:29 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:31 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:31 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:31 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:32 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:32 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:33 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:33 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:33 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXGetWindowLevel: Invalid window 0
Nov 13 21:35:35 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:35 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:35 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:35 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:50 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:50 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:50 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area
Nov 13 21:35:50 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area

Restarting today, there seemed to be no connection with CodeTek, only with any of the three drawer applications (DropDrawers, XShelf or Drag Thing); starting any of them started the write cycles, quitting them stopped them.

Yet, without accessing CodeTek at all, the writes started while typing this and quit when CodeTek was closed. My hard drive is idle again.

Nope, accessing the WindowServer.log started the cycling again. Here is a portion of current WindowServer.log:

Nov 14 19:51:41 [229] CGXPerformInitialDisplayConfiguration
Nov 14 19:51:41 [229] Display 0x42702c0: MappedDisplay Unit 0; Vendor 0x610 Model 0x9c0b S/N 0; online enabled built-in (0,0)[1024 x 768], base addr 0xb0018000
Nov 14 19:51:41 [229] Display 0x3f003d: MappedDisplay Unit 1; Vendor 0xffffffff Model 0xffffffff S/N -1; offline enabled (2048,0)[1 x 1], base addr 0xb0819000
Nov 14 19:51:41 [229] Display 0x41dc9d00: VirtualDisplay Unit 0; Vendor 0x756e6b6e Model 0x76697274 S/N 0; offline enabled built-in (2049,0)[1 x 1], base addr 0xb0015000
Nov 14 19:51:43 [229] kCGErrorFailure: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Unknown" for over 1 second. Server has re-enabled them.
Nov 14 19:51:58 [229] kCGErrorFailure: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "SystemUIServer" for over 1 second. Server has re-enabled them.
Nov 14 19:51:59 [229] kCGErrorFailure: CGXDisableUpdate: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Finder" for over 1 second. Server has re-enabled them.
Nov 14 19:52:08 [229] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area

and continuously on and on.


BTW, is there any harm in leaving permissions set for WindowServer.log to open in Console? Nah. I won't tempt it.

I don't any longer think that CodeTek VirtualDesktop is responsible for these things. When I use it, I seem to get many lines per second in windowserver.log like this:

Nov 13 21:34:13 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid tracking area

But on the other hand, today while I was out (with VirtualDesktop off since the last reboot), I got lines and lines of these in my windowserver.log and the mouse and keyboard were obviously completely idle. So I think that whatever causes these is not VirtualDesktop related (although use of VirtualDesktop might help the problem show up a bit more).


By the way, I guess I should not be surprised, but looking at the windowserver.log shows me the names of some of the files of another user on my computer at home:
19:37:09 getattrlist /.vol/234881033/341532/magnifying glass.cwk 0.000048 AppleWorks 6
19:37:09 getattrlist /.vol/234881033/341532/magnifying glass.cwk 0.000031 AppleWorks 6

This sounds a lot like the new Darwin defrag feature, It's been noted that just reading a file *can* result in up to 20MB of disk writes.

These features are dependant on Journalling, so by disabling it you will know if this is the cause of your disk writes.

Note: this is not a solution, its a way of ruling out a possible cause. dD

No, it does not sound like the new Darwin defrag feature, sorry.

It sounds like his window manager is logging tonnes of errors.

But the question is why. I have some errors in my log, but over an hour, this is all I have: I can fire up Drag Thing without any significant increase in windowserver.log errors. I always run virtual desktop, no problems there...

G4, 450MHz, AGP graphics, no Quartz Extreme

i've seen this on my machine from time to time dating all the way back to 10.1.

i've never been able to track down the reasons. the logging is maddeningly unspecific.

Rereading my posts, I realized it sounds like my OS is out of control, but its very much the opposite, which makes it all more mysterious.

Right now, there's no disk activity at all, CPU use is 2 - 20%, and idle with the following apps running: Safari, NetMonitor, Spell Checker, MemoryStick, TigerLaunch, PTHCPU, DiskSpy, and iClock.

Launching and quitting CodeTek or DragThing had no effect on that state this time. I will be paying very close attention to anything launched that does start the runaway writes process.

I understand there has been some contradictory reporting of what starts or ends the writes cascading here, but that makes it all the more puzzling.

examine the recent log entries. the bracketed [number] is the PID of the offending process, i believe.

e.g.,

Nov 13 21:35:50 [5941] kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGXRemoveTrackingArea : Invalid

Nov 14 19:51:41 [229] CGXPerformInitialDisplayConfiguration


$ ps -p 5941

to display the process info, if the process still exists

that's a pretty useful tidbit.

although in this case, it might be slightly less useful than i thought.

i have a couple clumps of these types of errors in the past 24 hours, but the PID on the errors is always the WindowServer, which doesn't provide any helpful info.