filesystems - How would I check how busy the HDD is with PHP? -

i've noticed cloud hosting solutions have poor disk io. causes few problems solved having script wait until disk less busy.

with php possible monitor busy (or not busy) state of filesystem without making things worse?

if linux system, can calculate disk usage - language choose implement in use same concepts.

your kernel using sysfs makes lot of information system available @ /sys; can grab information our desired disks @ regular interval, , calculate usage based on differences between them.

on system looking @ disk, sda, yours may differ.

$ cat /sys/class/block/sda/stat    42632       25  2045318   247192  6956543  7362278 123236256 23878974        0  3703033 24119492 

now if @ the kernel documentation /sys/class/block/<dev>/stat can see following descriptions each column of output.

name            units         description ----            -----         ----------- read i/os       requests      number of read i/os processed read merges     requests      number of read i/os merged in-queue i/o read sectors    sectors       number of sectors read read ticks      milliseconds  total wait time read requests write i/os      requests      number of write i/os processed write merges    requests      number of write i/os merged in-queue i/o write sectors   sectors       number of sectors written write ticks     milliseconds  total wait time write requests in_flight       requests      number of i/os in flight io_ticks        milliseconds  total time block device has been active time_in_queue   milliseconds  total wait time requests 

if run on cron schedule, , diff of wait times, can see how long waiting on each operation. have other stats total iops, , rw bandwidth. documentation goes more in depth on each field.

whatever language chosen, file descriptor open information disk be

/sys/class/block/<dev>/stat 

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if on schedule, can draw fancy graphs ;)