I am having a problem with performance of the drive system on a Debian
"Lenny" distro.  This is running RAID under mdadm with a reiserfs file
system on a raw partition.  The kernel is 2.6.26-1-amd64 running on an
AMD Athlon 64 x 2 CPU with 4G of RAM.  Ordinarily, performance is
quite good, and I have transferred files as fast as 480 Mbps upon
occasion.  Frequently, however, drive access will drop to dead zero
for about 40 seconds.  The trigger event seems to be file creation,
and I don't believe it usually happens unless a file is being
created.  It does not happen every time a file is created, but for
example I have a script which performs a number of tests and checks
and at the end creates a log file.  When the script reaches that
point, it often hangs, and if there are any network file transfers
going on in the background (there usually are), the network
utilization drops right off to almost zilch.  Another common trigger
is editing a video on one of the served Windows workstations.  At some
point the edit parameters are saved in a cut file.  When the user
first selects the "Save Project" utility, the file write often hangs
for about 40 seconds.  Sometimes Windows will report the drive is
full, or a timeout has occurred.  I do not know for a fact that drive
- drive transfers are suspended, but  NFS, SAMBA, FTP, and other
network transfers in both directions are abrupted for a period of
about 40 seconds.  Non-drive related transfers, or transfers to
devices other than the RAID array are not impacted.  There is nothing
in any of the logs to suggest anything at all has happened.
Interestingly enough, although Windows sometimes complains, ordinary
TCP transfers do not time out, despite the fact not a single byte
transfers in either direction during the event.

What can I do to try to find out what is hanging and why?
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