Bcmstat %iowt mostly in the red

Help and Support Raspberry Pi
1

Hi,

obviously I have a problem. From time to time, my remote controller keystrokes are not processed immediately by the kodi, but with a few seconds delay.

In order to find out what is going on I used bcmstat.sh script with –cxgM option, which reported constant %iowt between 25 and 60 while I am on the kodi’s main manu (I have just returned from an addon).

I have used iotop in order to see what is causing high io, and these two are the top:

Total DISK READ :     971.80 K/s | Total DISK WRITE :       0.00 B/s
Actual DISK READ:     571.02 K/s | Actual DISK WRITE:      35.47 K/s
  TID  PRIO  USER     DISK READ  DISK WRITE  SWAPIN     IO>    COMMAND
23577 be/4 osmc         21.59 M     15.08 M  0.00 % 77.37 % kodi.bin --standalone -fs --lircdev /var/run/lirc/lircd [LanguageInvoker]
  111 be/3 root          0.00 B      3.29 M  0.00 % 24.74 % [jbd2/mmcblk0p2-]

I am experiencing this type of problem somewhere from Semptember update (9-2 if I remember correctly).

While the problem is happening, in kodi log I can find:

11:58:24 66819.859375 T:1694188576   DEBUG: metahandler: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11:58:24 66819.859375 T:1694188576   DEBUG: metahandler: Attempting to retrieve meta data for movie: Memento 2000
11:58:24 66819.859375 T:1694188576   DEBUG: metahandler: Looking up in local cache by name for: movie memento 2000
11:58:24 66819.859375 T:1694188576   DEBUG: metahandler: SQL Select: SELECT * FROM movie_meta WHERE title = 'memento' AND year = 2000
11:58:25 66819.859375 T:1694188576   DEBUG: metahandler: Found meta information by name in cache table: {'rating': 8.5, 'year': 2000, 'duration': u'113', 'plot': u"Suffering short-term memory lo
11:58:25 66819.867188 T:1694188576   DEBUG: metahandler: Returned Meta: {'rating': 8.5, 'year': 2000, 'duration': u'113', 'plot': u"Suffering short-term memory loss after a head injury, Leonard
11:58:32 66827.039062 T:1694188576 WARNING: Attempt to use invalid handle 6

As iotop showed, the system reads/writes such a small amount of data.
How to trace this type of error?

All logs are on http://paste.osmc.io/ifopiviyan
(I haven’t restarted mediacenter in order not to loose the error).

2

A high io write from kodi.bin when you are apparently not doing anything is almost certainly an addon you have installed performing background work.

A clean install of Kodi would only use significant background disk IO when “idle” if it was doing a library scan (which would display a notification) or updating addons. (which would also display a notification)

Many video addons also install themselves as a “service” addon, this means they are free to run in the background when you are not “using” them. So the only way you’re likely to find which addon it is is to enable debug logging and look through kodi.log, or disable addons until you find which one it is.

Edit: looking at your log again, do you have the watchdog addon installed by any chance ?