smartd setup - do we have to execute smartctl at system boot?

Posted by laur_89@reddit | linuxadmin | View on Reddit | 2 comments

Have smartmontools pkg installed, which sets up smartd.service. Configuring /etc/smartd.conf is relatively straight-forward following manpage & wiki. Let's assume we have set DEVICESCAN as

DEVICESCAN -a -o on -S on -n standby,q -s (S/../.././02|L/../../6/03) -W 4,35,40 -m <nomailer> -M exec /usr/local/bin/notifier.sh

But what I don't understand is whether we're supposed to execute smartctl -s on -o on -S on /dev/X for each disk device at startup as well or not. Note smartctl manpage under examples states:

smartctl --smart=on --offlineauto=on --saveauto=on /dev/hda

Enable SMART on drive /dev/hda, enable automatic offline testing every four hours, and enable autosaving of SMART Attributes. This is a good start-up line for your system's init files.

This implies it should be executed at system startup. DEVICESCAN in smartd.conf has two of these options duplicated (DEVICESCAN -o on -S on) so perhaps the startup command can be shortened as smartctl --smart=on /dev/X

Is my understanding correct and above command should be executed at system startup? How do you set up your smartd instance?

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frymaster@reddit

apologies, I don't have first-hand knowledge, but this seems like it's something testable

make sure nothing smart-related will run on boot
plug-out-the-back cold reboot (as the drive will likely preserve settings during a simple reboot)
observe current smart settings. Change all ones you're interested to the opposite - not to "what you want them to be", but the opposite
plug-out-the-back cold reboot
observe current smart settings

aioeu@reddit

I've never run it, and the smartd.service on my systems does not run it.

It might be the case that some devices don't enable SMART by default, so perhaps --snart=on might be necessary. The documentation says --saveauto= is preserved across drive power cycles, so it shouldn't need to be used on every boot.

So that just leaves --offlineauto=. If you want automatic offline tests, that could possibly be useful.

The documentation also says the underlying ATA commands behind all of these settings are obsolete... so maybe they won't work anyway.