[clue-tech] Tracking disk i/o by process?

[Dan Harris]

On Dec 3, 2007, at 5:05 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:

> On Mon, 3 Dec 2007 17:01:23 -0700
> dan at drivefaster.net (Dan Harris) wrote:
>
>> I'm troubleshooting a server that is suffering from some annoying
>> i/o write storms and trying to track down which processes are to
>> blame.
>>
>> Does anyone know of a way to track the number of read/writes and
>> summarize them by pid?  dstat shows when it's happening, but doesn't
>> show us *which* processes are responsible. which is not very helpful.
>
> Well, unfortunately it requires python-2.5, but if your machine has
> that you can use iotop:
>
> http://guichaz.free.fr/misc/#iotop
>
>>

Thanks for the quick response.  This looks to be very useful, although  
it seems to want something I don't have..

"- Linux >= 2.6.20 with I/O accounting support: Not found"

This is kernel 2.6.22 using Ubuntu Gutsy server.  What do I need to  
enable for "I/O accounting support"?