Possibly cpu-whining with Linux distros

I think at this point it would be important to record the sound. Is there really no way you can achieve that? Because after everything we checked out, it seems like it could be caused by anything. We aren’t even sure where to look for, since it could be just about any part of the device.

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Hi,

Yes, you´re right. That´s what I think, too.
Besides, the regular 10 minute intervals (when the system is idle) seem to indicate that the sound is OS driven :question:
But I could be wrong of course.

I would if I could but have no idea how to manage that. :slightly_frowning_face:
Besides the sound is really quiet…

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If it is, try a different OS. :smile:

Any standalone microphone should be better than built-in ones. If the sound is really quiet, it would help if you would record the sound, with the microphone as close as possible to the sound source, then you can pump up the gain of the recording by a couple hundred %, if necessary. I’m sure there should result at least a quiet representation of the noise you are hearing. If it were too quiet, you wouldn’t hear it, in the first place, would you. :wink:

Maybe you can find an old voice recorder, somwhere. In my experience, they are super sensitive and record even the smallest noises very well. I posses a Philips DVT1110 and it is extremely sensitive. I can whisper in one part of the room, while it is recording in the other part of the room and I can still hear myself on the recording. It’s great.

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Hi @Akito:

Thanks for your suggestions.

I already did that with different live-systems: Besides Lubuntu I also tried LXLE and BodhiLinux (all 64 bit).
It was the same with any of those, yet I imagine that Bodhi produced more of that whining noise than the other two.
Perhaps its something Linux-specific. :question:

As my setup still is dual-boot (WIN7 and Lubuntu) I might power up WIN for a change to see whether my original statement (whining only on Linux, not on WIN) still holds true.

I definitively haven´t got one but could ask some of my friends and acquaintances.

In the meantime thanks again for your help.
Greetings.
Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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cue the :recycle: refrain :slight_smile: : journalctl -f (i still like lnav better) might have some info about what is happening at those intervals.

with smartctl installed i can see smartd querying the temp sensor every hour, but that might be different for an hdd and i really wouldn’t imagine that would need to access the drive proper (and, thus, the led). i also have timeshift set up to create daily snapshots and can see that checked in the logs as well. those checks do blink my external hdd led, but only happen hourly on my (admittedly overcautious) setup.

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Hi again and tnx a lot,

I also used lnav now and looked at the readings. Every 10 mins with clockwork regularity the whining sound appears for some secs. But lnav showed nothing. But it was certainly worth a shot.

But - perhaps as some additional info - I now managed to produce that sound at will. All I have to do is looking at the SMART values of my hdd with
sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda .
As a result I got this:

smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [x86_64-linux-5.4.0-40-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   115   099   006    Pre-fail  Always       -       89330422
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   098   098   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   099   099   020    Old_age   Always       -       1074
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   036    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   081   060   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       132273019
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   097   097   000    Old_age   Always       -       3358
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   099   099   020    Old_age   Always       -       1072
184 End-to-End_Error        0x0032   100   100   099    Old_age   Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   095   000    Old_age   Always       -       25
189 High_Fly_Writes         0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   062   056   045    Old_age   Always       -       38 (Min/Max 37/38)
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       29
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       50
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   097   097   000    Old_age   Always       -       6845
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   038   044   000    Old_age   Always       -       38 (0 8 0 0 0)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   048   041   000    Old_age   Always       -       89330422
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
254 Free_Fall_Sensor        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

, which might not be of interest but I thought I post it anyway.

What is interesting however is the fact that whenever I perform that command the output as posted above is immediately displayed in the terminal.
But the “whining” sound stlill lingers on for about 4 or 5 seconds. At the end of those 5 secs: a short HDD-access-blink of the respective LED.
And that´s every time I run that command.

However: If I redirect the output like this:
sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda > output.txt or even
sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda | tee output.txt
That whining may still be heard but only for a fraction of a second. It´s more or less a click. Very strange.

Alas, that´s the only new info I can add. Sorry. :slightly_frowning_face:

As far as the direct comparison to WIN7 is concerned: that was a total fiasco.

After booting into WIN the fan got running at high speed and wouldn´t slow down even after 7 mins.
Of course it´s impossible to hear anything as silent as this whining noise under these circumstances.
What a relief it was to boot into Lubuntu after that. :slightly_smiling_face:

Greetings.
Rosika

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Sounds like it may be the hard drive spinning up to either access something or record a log file? Laptop hard drives always seem way more ‘robust’ than desktop versions but it could possibly be on the way out? (or maybe fine and you never really noticed it previously? May also be due to dual boot using different sectors compared to Windows getting special (original) access sectors so read head is moving more?
I’m a mechanic not a computer guru but moving parts are moving parts which I kinda understand

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@1crazypj:
Hi and thank you so much for you views.

You may be perfectly right in assuming :

and that as well:

Plus: accessing different sectors due to dual boot makes sense as well. Good point. :+1:

Your insights are very plausible and I think it´s best to assume everything´s alright.

Perhaps I delivered a not-so-correct description of the noise although I was trying to do my best.
Come to think of it it´s not so much a whining noise as more of some sort of static noise (as the pitch doesn´t vary at all). Plus: it´s very quiet.

At least it seems like it´s coming from the HDD, not from the cpu or backlight etc.

I started a Puppy Linux Live distro from my usb-stick (http://puppylinux.com/index.html#download ).

Puppy is extraordinarily small, yet quite full-featured. Puppy boots into a ramdisk and, unlike live CD distributions that have to keep pulling stuff off the CD, it loads into RAM
(https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=puppy )

I thought this one shouldn´t use the HDD to a great extent (if at all).
And indeed: I let it run for half an hour and the “static noise” didn´t show up once.

Thanks again for yor fine help.
Many greetings.
Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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Try this:

It’s a very intensive write operation. If you hear the sound during that process constantly, it is your HDD without question.

If it is your HDD and it’s just the writing sound, then there is nothing you can do about it, except putting your drive to read-only mode or changing to a different drive.

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Thanks for the suggestion and the link.
I´ll look into it.
A short glance showed me that there´s more than jutst “wipe” (which I know and often use).
Seems to make for interesting reading.

Greetiings.
Rosika

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Hi Rosika,
I ran dealer workshops for several years plus I taught at a trade school for motorcycle mechanics so got used to ‘translating descriptions’ of weird noises.
After I thought about it for a while, this was ‘easier’ than some of the things I’ve done when non-technical’ people describe something as there are less parts in a computer that can make a noise.
If it’s something that should never be 'buzzing/whining it’s almost always terminal and the ‘magic smoke’ leaks out.
Hopefully you’ll find it’s nothing serious and computer will give several years more use.
I usually get a cheapish ‘enterprise’ hard drive and swap everything (software & OS, etc) if a mechanical drive starts making weird sounds.
It’s very easy as you just remove a few screws and sometimes a holding tray.
Except for Apple, (who glue things together or use ‘proprietary’ fixings) computer hardware is pretty simple, you have to remember it’s originally assembled in a factory by semi-skilled workers. (Apple deliberately make things difficult, I will never buy another Apple product and ‘look down’ on anyone dumb enough to believe their hype)
PJ

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@1crazypj:
Hi Peter,

thank you for your views and comments.

Thanks. I hope that was well.

I´ve tried to desrcibe that humming noise as well as I could. But nothing could get near the real sound.
Come to think of it it may best be described as something like the humming sound of a bee.
Only quiter and only at times. Plus: steady in pitch.

But thanks again for your suggestions.

Greetings.
Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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i realize this is a bit after the bulk of the discussion, but i was running my new drive through the initial smart checks and tests today when i remembered coming across this page a while back. it is a bit dated (from 2013), but i wouldn’t think smart values/data/methodology have changed much since the same tools are still in use. i don’t have a clue who the author of the piece is beyond what is stated in the short bio section, so please feel to take the advice/info with a grain of salt :slight_smile:

The attributes that you should pay careful attention to are
ID#s 1, 5 and 197 (01, 05, C5 in hexadecimal). These are the most common attributes with problems that cause a recoverable disappearance of drives.

ID#1 or 01 ‘Raw Read Error Rate’ is related to the frequency of errors appearing while reading RAW data from a disk. Ignore the Raw Value and go by the normalized Value. If it is decreasing and getting close to the threshold value then the drive can probably be recovered by making an image of it…

ID#5 or 05 ‘Reallocated Sector Count’ is the quantity of remapped sectors. This is the number of ‘hard’ bad sectors that have been reallocated by the internal controls of the hard drive. The hard drive has a number of sectors in reserve to replace these bad ones. These are inaccessible sectors that the drive expects to be bad forever which means they are most likely physically damaged. Data that was in those sectors was probably lost for good. Modern hard drives should not have any. My personal ‘rule of thumb’ is that if there are less than 10 of these (Raw Value is less than 10) and after checking it periodically during use I find that the number is not increasing, I then believe the drive to be trustworthy for future use but continued monitoring of the value is recommended.

ID#197 or C5 ‘Current Pending Sector’ is the quantity of sectors that are not able to be read but have not been reallocated yet. These are ‘soft’ bad sectors because there is still a chance that they will be successfully read. The way they typically become ‘hard’ bad sectors is when an attempt is made to write to them and is unsuccessful. When this happens, they are removed from this attribute and added to ID#5. When this happens a new sector is pulled from the reserve pool of sectors on the hard drive and used to replace this one. Many programs proclaim that they can repair bad sectors. What they often do is not really repair them. Instead they force the drive to attempt to write to them and if they are unable to it forces them to be reallocated with sectors from the reserve pool and to the computer user, it appears as if the ‘soft’ bad sector has been repaired. In fact, the data in the sector has been lost and it has been replaced with a new and healthy sector. I typically treat this number the same as ID#05. My personal ‘rule of thumb’ is that if there are less than 10 of these (Raw Value is less than 10) and after checking it periodically during use I find that the number is not increasing, I then believe the drive to be trustworthy for future use but continued monitoring of the value is recommended.

(bold for emphasis mine)

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Regarding hard drives, it pretty much does not matter, because the devices are pretty much done in terms of innovation. The only things that change about them are small performance or capacity improvements, that’s it. Hard drives won’t change much, anymore. Especially, since everyone is talking about SSDs now, anyway.
I read a book about HDD forensics, which also explains the internals of a hard drive in a very detailed manner. It was published in 2005, but the information is still just as valid and applicable, today.

That said, the author of the article you quoted explained the indications of a problematic hard drive, pretty well.

The only thing I’d like to correct is the “trustworthy” part. As explained in an earlier post, you should never fully trust a hard drive. It may fail anytime, theoretically. You should always keep backups of data that is important to you.

Therefore, if the drive has bad sectors, it increases the chance of data loss. However, having no bad sectors (or bad SMART values, in general) does not implicate that the drive is safe. The chances of failure are comparatively lower, however it is still not trustworthy. Again, people had hard drives that failed really hard and they still had perfect SMART values…
other people had drives with bad SMART values and the drive was still used for 2 years without any data loss or other issue.

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Hi,
thanks for your comments and the link you provided. Seems very interesting.

Also thanks for pointing out the relevant parts ID#s 1, 5 and 197.
I´ll take a closer look at the article.

Greetings
Rosika

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@Akito
Hi,
thanks for your comments as well.

As for that part:
I´ve made it a habit of performing a disk backup with clonezilla (https://clonezilla.org/ ) once a month. This way I´ve got a system backup including all my personal data.
I do that for my main PC but perhaps I should consider doing that for my laptop as well.

Cheers.
Rosika

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Agree with you 100% about backups, but I would say for any device, not just hard drives.
If it is important to you, back it up. The more important it is to you the more often you should back it up and maybe even multiple backups or (father / son) backups.

I have a laptop and that’s exactly what I do. The laptop has a specific hard drive. So I have two of the same drives connected via a USB adapter.

I rotate the external drives. I use Clonezilla. I have two versions of Clonezille on flash drives and rotate them.

That way I have two different backups.

It did pay off one time. Open laptop, remove HDD, insert backup HDD, assemble PC, power up. Now on backup drive. Replace failed HDD.

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I guess this has switched to a hard drive discussion?
After having hard drives fail you do get a bit more positive about doing back up’s.
It’s also a good idea to have a full back up in case you get hacked by ransomware or similar (or, in Florida, have a telephone or power line struck by lightning- I had a modem explode out of computer several years ago).
I have a stack (literally) of back up drives that I run externally with adapters (not pretty and probably not best thing to do) but, it works. Laptop drives generally seem more robust and are pretty cheap for 500Gb so I’m slowly swapping full size drives for laptop ones (although I do have a couple of 2 terabyte desktop drives with full back up’s on them) Even though SSD are probably more reliable I still don’t ‘trust’ them as they still need a permanent power supply or they lose data (afiak?) If they act like a giant thumb drive I guess they won’t lose anything/ I have a couple of drives I bought in early 2000’s that still read perfect although I haven’t written anything to them for 10+ years

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Interesting post and good example of having backups. The more important the data / system is to you, the more backups you should have. During the past 20 years, almost all of my vacation / family pictures are digital. I keep 4 copies. One each on 4 different HDD on 2 different PC and 2 external disks.
One bit of confusion for me with this statement;

about SSD. My SSD’s don’t lose data without power. Nor have I hear / read about no power being an issue with SSD’s.

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