Custom Query (1359 matches)

I observed that when smartd is polling for SMART data, Windows sometimes spins up a disk that is powered down even when “-n standby” is used in smartd.conf. The log will report that the disk is in standby mode and checks are suspended. Still you can hear that the disk is starting.

I found that this behavior is caused by smartd when opening the (physical) disk device. Smartd opens the disk asking for full read and write permissions by default. (Only when it does not have admin rights, it opens the disk with ‘0’ permissions.) But opening with full read and write permissions sometimes results in Windows spinning up the disk, most likely to consolidate Windows’ internal state with the disk. However, to query the disk’s power state, you only need a handle to query the drive’s metadata, without any read or write permissions.

The attached patch adds a new function to the base class ‘smart_device’: ‘check_os_powermode()’. The generic default implementation returns true to indicate power up or undetermined. The Win32 implementation uses Windows’ GetDevicePowerState API, and returns false when the OS indicates that the device is in low-power state. However, the point is when the ‘smart_device’ is not already opened, ‘check_os_powermode()’ opens the device temporarily using ‘0’ permissions to open only a handle for querying device metadata, and so prevents the disk from spinning up. (Even when admin rights would be available.)

Forwarding from ​https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/smartmontools/+bug/1653560

syslog entries like

Jan 2 20:22:27 server smartd[876]: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 110 to 112

should be less confusing and logging should by default only take place if something is worth to be warned about.

That said, a "health" value below 100% (e.g. 98%) should trigger the logging, because then the health status as specified by the vendor is no more perfect.

And the output could be more verbose and less confusing. I suggest:

Jan 2 20:22:27 server smartd[876]: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius: Thermal health changed from 110% (40°C) to 112% (38°C)

Given that normalization is specified by vendors, smartmontools could also take into account that e.g. health below 90% is critical (for WD drives that would be 60°C) and also should reported as critical (WARNING, etc.).

Current smartd reports send by mail only list device name (e.g. /dev/sdc) which is not enough to easily identify the problematic disk.

It will be better to add some more info to the report, e.g. something like:

The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon:

Device: /dev/sdc [SAT], 4 Offline uncorrectable sectors

-----------

Device Model: WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0 Serial Number: WD-WMAZ2026xxxxx User Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 bytes [2.00 TB]

(above is easily obtained by smartctl -i /dev/sdc |egrep "Device Model|Serial Number|User Capacity")