48-bit ATA commands not supported on OS X

[cmurf]

When running smartctl -x /dev/disk0, I get the following messages:
SMART WRITE LOG does not return COUNT and LBA_LOW register
SCT (Get) Error Recovery Control command failed

Device Statistics (GP Log 0x04) not supported

ATA_READ_LOG_EXT (addr=0x11:0x00, page=0, n=1) failed: 48-bit ATA commands not implemented
Read SATA Phy Event Counters failed

Regression:
This problem doesn't occur on the same hardware, with the same version of smartmontools, on linux.

Notes:
​https://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2013-February/031771.html

There's uncertainty if this is an upstream bug in smartmontools or if this is a limitation of xnu or IOKit on OS X. I've filed a bug with Apple, Problem ID: 14368815.

[cmurf]

smartctl -x on OS X

[cmurf]

smartctl -x on linux

[cmurf]

Darwin ming.local 12.4.0 Darwin Kernel Version 12.4.0: Wed May 1 17:57:12 PDT 2013; root:xnu-2050.24.15~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

I've been able to reproduce these results since 10.6.x through 10.8.4, various models of Apple hardware, and HDDs and SSDs.

[Christian Franke]

This is Mac OS X limitation, not a smartmontools problem.

The Darwin kernel only provides IOATASMARTInterface. This API only supports ATA IDENTIFY and SMART commands (see os_darwin.cpp​). There is no transparent (S)ATA pass-through functionality. The same applies to SCSI/SAS.

As a consequence, ATA commands which are not related to SMART do not work, regardless of ATA register size (28-bit or 48-bit). Try for example: smartctl --set apm,N ... (This uses 28-bit ATA SET_FEATURES command).

Feel free to reopen this ticket after someone has added pass-through functionality to the Darwin kernel.

[cmurf]

Understood. I've copied this information and cited reference to this report, to the Apple problem ID 14368815. And I've also, referenced this with downstream Macports project, ticket 39653.