Re: Beginner Help

Gregory Sloop <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.linux.utilities.smartmontools
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Doesn't which drive you were testing in the command line tell you where it's plugged in?

i.e. smartctl -a /dev/sda [Well, *you* asked it to list all the information for /dev/sda - so it should be obvious that whatever drive is plugged into /dev/sda is the drive you're referencing!]

If you tested /dev/sda - then the result is for the drive that is connected to whatever port is /dev/sda!
If you move that drive to another port, it's going to be /dev/sdb or something different. But the device *you* supply to test is which port the drive is plugged into. You're not testing a specific device/drive, you're testing the device connected to a specific port. [/dev/sda in the example above.]

Further, if you look at the output, it will list the serial number of the drive. If you're really not sure, you can compare the serial number of the output with that physically printed on the drive.

As I noted in my initial response to the list, it really seems you haven't thoroughly read the docs and spent substantial time understanding the very basics of the tool - so you ask very odd questions. Perhaps I'm overly irritated about it, but it seems, to me at least, like you're wasting time asking for others to solve your problem and supply an exact command-line example that will do everything you need. [Like logging, for example. "> somefile" seemed obvious ...]

The same criticism applies to this "position" question. Smartmon doesn't *continually* monitor the state of specific controller ports or drives. It gives you some stats that apply to the very instant that smartmontools ran on a particular/specific device. If the drive/device experiences problems [or is unplugged etc] 5m from now, smartmontools won't know anything about it until you run it again. It will then, again, give you some values on the drive that apply to that specific moment in time, and that will apply to the device you asked it about - i.e. /dev/sda.

-Greg

---
For reference, here's part of the data returned by a smartctl -a /dev/sdX

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital VelociRaptor
Device Model:     WDC WD1600HLFS-75G6U0
Serial Number:    WD-WXL111111111
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 056252940
Firmware Version: 04.04V01
User Capacity:    160,000,000,000 bytes [160 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate:    10000 rpm
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS (minor revision not indicated)
SATA Version is:  SATA 2.5, 3.0 Gb/s
Local Time is:    Thu Nov 06 07:25:40 2014 PST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled



Hi Robert,

By disk position I mean to say that suppose you have multiple disks in your machine then say disk at position 2 was plugged in or out, disk at position 4 had a bad sector etc. I mean to say each disk would be placed at a position in your machine, so can we get this position using smartctl.

One thing more that how smartd is useful to us?

Thanks & Regards,
Manu

From: [email protected]
Sent: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 23:44:11 
To: "Himanshu Pandey" <[email protected]>
Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [smartmontools-support] Beginner Help
Do keep in mind 5.38 is quite old. I recommend you upgrade. Beyond that,
it is -x, not -X (Linux is case sensitive). The old version of the -x
command is -a . -x requires the drive support 48 bit commands, while -a
only requires 28 (I think). However, on larger drives, the 28 bit commands
can return bogus values.

For the individual pieces of info:

1 - Position of the drive - Don't understand what you want here. The age
of the drive???
2 - Disk plugged in or out - In Linux, the system logs should record that.
SMART has nothing to do with that.
3 - Bad sector - Look for changes (in SMART) in the *RAW* values of
pending and reallocated sectors. Of course, not pending sectors are really
bad, but a change in the value will tell you something is going on, at
least for platter drives. SSD drives are still to new to me to give firm
advice.

> Hi Robert,
> Yesterday you told me the command smarctl -X for logging but unfortunately
> I can't use this command as my device is using the version 5.38 and this
> command is not available with this version. Actually I am looking for only
> two important pieces of information which I have to log, &nbsp;the one is
> position of disk drive and the second is event like disk plugged in,
> plugged out, bad sector etc. Please tell me where can I find this
> information and how?
> Please help.
> Regards,Manu&nbsp;
> From: [email protected]
> Sent: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 18:51:02
> To: "Himanshu  Pandey" &lt;');">[email protected]>;
> Cc: "[email protected]"
> &lt;');">[email protected]>;
> Subject: Re: [smartmontools-support] Beginner Help
> Since it's a CF card, it is likely that the chipset of the card (or card
>
> reader) does not support SAT. SMART is technically optional...
>
>
>
> &gt; Hi,
>
> &gt; On running the command&amp;nbsp;smartctl -a /dev/sda on my device,I
> get the
>
> &gt; following output
>
> &gt; smartctl 6.3 2014-07-26 r3976 [x86_64-linux-2.6.34msg64_2xxx] (local
>
> &gt; build)Copyright (C) 2002-14, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke,
>
> &gt; www.smartmontools.org
>
> &gt; === START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===Model Family: &amp;nbsp;
> &amp;nbsp; Transcend
>
> &gt; CompactFlash CardsDevice Model: &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; TRANSCENDSerial
> Number:
>
> &gt; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;20100412 &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;CF1007B4Firmware
> Version: 20100202User
>
> &gt; Capacity: &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;2,038,063,104 bytes [2.03 GB]Sector
> Size: &amp;nbsp;
>
> &gt; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;512 bytes logical/physicalDevice is: &amp;nbsp;
> &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;
>
> &gt; &amp;nbsp;In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]ATA Version
> is:
>
> &gt; &amp;nbsp; ATA/ATAPI-4 (minor revision not indicated)Local Time is:
> &amp;nbsp;
>
> &gt; &amp;nbsp;Wed Nov &amp;nbsp;5 15:35:11 2014 ISTSMART support is:
> Ambiguous - ATA
>
> &gt; IDENTIFY DEVICE words 85-87 don't show if SMART is enabled.A
> mandatory
>
> &gt; SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T
>
> &gt; permissive' options.&amp;nbsp;
>
> &gt; Can anybody tell me that why I am getting "SMART support is:
> Ambiguous -
>
> &gt; ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE words 85-87 don't show if SMART is
> enabled."&amp;nbsp;
>
> &gt; How to solve this problem?
>
> &gt; Please help.
>
> &gt; Regards,Manu
>
> &lt;snip&gt;
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Smartmontools-support mailing list
>
> [email protected]
>
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/smartmontools-support
>
>



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