And don't forget to run iostat -xn to make sure that it's just not some storage/IO hang (even tools like top might read/load stuff from disk if they haven't been used for a while) On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 12:15 AM, Tanel Poder <tanel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Try to truss your ls -ltr or other commands which get stuck - if you get > stuck in a system call, this should show it (of course the truss itself may > take a while to get started). > > Top would open up lots of /proc filesystem files, so you may have a file > descriptor allocation issue ... or some bug related to OS spinlock > contention (mpstat would show increase in smtx column) > > -- > Tanel Poder > Consulting, Training: > http://blog.tanelpoder.com > Expert Oracle Exadata book: > http://www.apress.com/9781430233923 > > > > > -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l