Excessive I/O at 4:02AM due to daily cron job mlocate.cron

(Doc ID 2111890.1)

Last updated on SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

Applies to:

Linux OS - Version Oracle Linux 5.0 and later
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Symptoms

The cron job /etc/cron.daily/mlocate.cron using command updatedb to update /var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db database, a database which contains a searchable of files.

Under some circumstances, the cron job can create excessive I/O that hangs the system, specially when having virtual disks of multiple Linux virtual machines on same storage.

Cause

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