How do I stop Ubuntu from hanging due to processes going into 'disk sleep'?

Posted by joeforker on Super User See other posts from Super User or by joeforker
Published on 2009-08-12T23:38:47Z Indexed on 2010/04/21 14:43 UTC
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ubuntu

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linux

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hang

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process

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sleep

I'm using Ubuntu 9.04 64 bit on an AMD. It regularly hangs for a few minutes at a time when some of the processes's CPU usage % goes into 'disk sleep'. During that time I can't start new programs and most of the programs on the desktop become unresponsive.

I would rather it didn't hang and my applications remained reliably responsive. Why does this happen and how can I stop it?

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