Opened 8 years ago

Closed 8 years ago

Last modified 8 years ago

#634 closed enhancement (wontfix)

Do not operate on drives which are security locked by password

Reported by: Andreas E Owned by:
Priority: minor Milestone:
Component: all Version: 6.4
Keywords: ata Cc:

Description

The following is not me, but it's fairly similar:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=178554

scsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=xx offset=yy bd_len=zz

Well after I got this message when trying to do a smartctl long test, I thought my drive was faulty as this guy's one was, but it was 100% OK.

The actual reason for the "error" was almost to be called hilarious: my drive was security locked!
This happened after using security erase (enhanced) via hdparm:

# hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass /dev/sdc blahdiblah
# hdparm --user-master u --security-erase enhanced /dev/sdc blahdiblah

It may be a bug in hdparm that it doesn't always release the lock as soon as it has finished erasing.

Anyways, that "faulty" drive was actually a great drive, and after doing a DISPWD on it via MHDD, it gave me a PERFECT rating on HDD Sentinel.

tl;dr ?

What this enhancement request is about:

  • Do not operate on drives that are security locked by password (makes less sense), instead:
  • Inform the user THAT their drive is security locked and write out something like "Can't operate on this drive - unlock it first" so that the user knows what they're up to.
  • Do not lead the user down the garden path by telling them about a responselength being too short, making them think it's their drive which is at (hardware) fault.

Change History (5)

comment:1 by Christian Franke, 8 years ago

Component: smartctlall
Keywords: ata added; security lock unlock password removed
Milestone: Release 6.5

comment:2 by Christian Franke, 8 years ago

Milestone: Release 6.5
Resolution: wontfix
Status: newclosed

The ATA commands issued by smartctl shall even work if the (S)ATA drive is in SECURITY LOCKED state.

See commands IDENTIFY, SMART READ DATA, SMART READ LOG, ... in table 9 of ATA/ATAPI-8 Command Set (ACS) revision 6a.

comment:3 by Alex Samorukov, 8 years ago

I just tested this with my old laptop:

  1. I booted from USB and issues sleep command to "unfreeze" disk (freezed by bios)
  2. Password was set using hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass 123456 /dev/sda
  3. At this time disk changes status to "password set, not locked", so i put laptop to sleep again to force status change.
  4. After wakeup it is in locked state, smartctl -i works fine, smartctl -x shows most of the data correctly, but some commands failing (write SCT Data Table failed) and return scsi error.

Anyway, symptoms are very different from yours, so probably i will check if it is a real issue and will open another ticket.

comment:4 by Alex Samorukov, 8 years ago

Created bug #637 to deal with ATA security issues.

comment:5 by Andreas E, 8 years ago

but some commands failing (write SCT Data Table failed) and return scsi error.

samm2, thanks for your concern and for taking the time to do a testcase.

Whilst my 'wontfix' will probably stay, arousing some interest on smartctl's behavior on drives in locked state may not have been the wrongest thing to do, after all. :)

Last edited 8 years ago by Andreas E (previous) (diff)
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