How to monitor S.M.A.R.T. data

How to monitor S.M.A.R.T. data#

If you want to monitor your target computer disks health and temperatures, then this section is for you!

Prerequisites:

Important

🙏 Help is welcome / appreciated 🙏

🚧 WiP / TODO 🚧#

The best strategy for SMART monitoring would be to configure /etc/smartd.conf with something like:

# vi /etc/smartd.conf
    > ...
    > # DEVICESCAN # /!\ Comment this line /!\
    > ...
    > # Monitors...
    > # ...SMART health status ("-H")
    > # ...SMART log errors and selftest ("-l error" and "-l selftest")
    > # ...failure of any 'usage' attributes ("-f")
    > # &
    > # Start self-test ("-s") of type 'short' ("S/../../5/03") every week on
    > # Friday at 3:00 a.m ("S/../../5/03").
    > # &
    > # Send a test mail every time SMART daemon start up and for every repport
    > # if there is a problem (with a daily reminder in this case).
    >
    > /dev/sdb -m root -M exec /path/to/script -H -l error -l selftest -f -s (S/../../7/05|L/../01/./05)

Which will execute /path/to/script that could access the following environment variables:

  • STDIN

  • SMARTD_MAILER: set to the argument of -M exec if present, or else to ‘mail’.

  • SMARTD_DEVICE: set to the device path (e.g.: /dev/sda).

  • SMARTD_DEVICETYPE: set to the device type specified by ‘-d’ directive or ‘auto’ if none.

  • SMARTD_DEVICESTRING: set to the device description.

  • SMARTD_DEVICEINFO: set to device identify information (most of the info in smartctl  -i).

  • SMARTD_FAILTYPE: set to the reason for the warning or message email. Possible value are:

    • EmailTest: this is an email test message.

    • Health: the SMART health status indicates imminent failure.

    • Usage: a usage Attribute has failed.

    • SelfTest: the number of self-test failures has increased.

    • ErrorCount: the number of errors in the ATA error log has increased.

    • CurrentPendingSector: one of more disk sectors could not be read and are marked to be reallocated (replaced with spare sectors).

    • OfflineUncorrectableSector: during off-line testing, or self-testing, one or more disk sectors could not be read.

    • Temperature: Temperature reached critical limit (see -W directive).

    • FailedHealthCheck: the SMART health status command failed.

    • FailedReadSmartData: the command to read SMART Attribute data failed.

    • FailedReadSmartErrorLog: the command to read the SMART error log failed.

    • FailedReadSmartSelfTestLog: the command to read the SMART self-test log failed.

    • FailedOpenDevice: the open() command to the device failed.

  • SMARTD_ADDRESS: set to the address argument ADD of the ‘-m’ Directive.

  • SMARTD_MESSAGE: set to the one sentence summary warning email message string from smartd.

  • SMARTD_FULLMESSAGE: set to the contents of the entire email warning message string from smartd.

  • SMARTD_TFIRST: set to the time and date at which the first problem of this type was reported.

  • SMARTD_TFIRSTEPOCH: set to an integer, the unix epoch for SMARTD_TFIRST.

  • SMARTD_PREVCNT: set to an integer specifying the number of previous messages sent.

  • SMARTD_NEXTDAYS: set to an integer specifying the number of days until the next msg will be sent.

Cf. $ man smartd.conf

The /path/to/script would write all those environment variables, e.g. in /tmp/smart_monit.log

Finally, the asub would just have to parse /tmp/smart_monit.log for a SMARTD_FAILTYPE. The mail sending script could also include this file /tmp/smart_monit.log.

Source(s)#

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