-d megaraid with SATA drives requires -T permissive to work

[Alex Samorukov]

I have 2 DELL PERC 6/i controllers on different servers. Only difference is that first is connected to SATA drives and second - to SAS. While there is no problems at all with SAS drive, SATA is not working w/o -T permissive:

Output from controller with SAS drives:

smartctl 5.39 2009-09-22 r2922M [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-9 by Bruce Allen, ​http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

Creating /dev/megaraid_sas_ioctl_node = 17
Got MegaRAID inquiry.. FUJITSU MAX3073RC D206
Device: FUJITSU MAX3073RC Version: D206
Serial number: DQA3P6700JF9
Device type: disk
Transport protocol: SAS
Local Time is: Wed Sep 23 17:29:54 2009 EDT
Device supports SMART and is Enabled
Temperature Warning Disabled or Not Supported
SMART Health Status: OK

Current Drive Temperature: 29 C
[SKIP]

Output from controller with SATA drives:
[root@var-dev smartmontools]# ./smartctl /dev/sda -d megaraid,0 -i -a
smartctl 5.39 2009-09-22 r2922 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-9 by Bruce Allen, ​http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

Creating /dev/megaraid_sas_ioctl_node = 17
Got MegaRAID inquiry.. ATA WDC WD5000AACS-01B01
/dev/sda [megaraid_disk_00] [SAT]: Device open changed type from 'megaraid' to 'sat'

START OF INFORMATION SECTION

Model Family: Western Digital Caviar Green family
Device Model: WDC WD5000AACS-00ZUB0
Serial Number: WD-WCASU7381205
Firmware Version: 01.01B01
User Capacity: 500,107,862,016 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Wed Sep 23 14:31:46 2009 PDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

Rejecting SMART/ATA command to controller
Rejecting SMART/ATA command to controller
Error SMART Status command failed
Please get assistance from ​http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.

Trying -T permissive, and, bingo, it works!

smartctl 5.39 2009-09-22 r2922 [x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-9 by Bruce Allen, ​http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

Creating /dev/megaraid_sas_ioctl_node = 17
Got MegaRAID inquiry.. ATA WDC WD5000AACS-01B01
/dev/sda [megaraid_disk_00] [SAT]: Device open changed type from 'megaraid' to 'sat'

START OF INFORMATION SECTION

Model Family: Western Digital Caviar Green family
Device Model: WDC WD5000AACS-00ZUB0
Serial Number: WD-WCASU7381205
Firmware Version: 01.01B01
User Capacity: 500,107,862,016 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Wed Sep 23 14:32:31 2009 PDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

Rejecting SMART/ATA command to controller
Rejecting SMART/ATA command to controller
Error SMART Status command failed
Please get assistance from ​http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION

SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x84) Offline data collection activity

was suspended by an interrupting command from host.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.

Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed

without error or no self-test has ever
been run.

[SKIP]