smartd will attempt to enable SMART monitoring on ATA devices (equivalent to smartctl -s on) and polls these and SCSI devices every 30 minutes (configurable), logging SMART errors and changes of SMART Attributes via the SYSLOG interface. The default location for these SYSLOG notifications and warnings is system-dependent (typically /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog). To change this default location, please see the '-l' command-line option described below.
In addition to logging to a file, smartd can also be configured to send email warnings if problems are detected. Depending upon the type of problem, you may want to run self-tests on the disk, back up the disk, replace the disk, or use a manufacturer's utility to force reallocation of bad or unreadable disk sectors. If disk problems are detected, please see the smartctl manual page and the smartmontools web page/FAQ for further guidance.
If you send a USR1 signal to smartd it will immediately check the status of the disks, and then return to polling the disks every 30 minutes. See the '-i' option below for additional details.
smartd can be configured at start-up using the configuration file /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf (Windows: EXEDIR/smartd.conf). If the configuration file is subsequently modified, smartd can be told to re-read the configuration file by sending it a HUP signal, for example with the command: killall -HUP smartd. (Windows: See NOTES below.)
On startup, if smartd finds a syntax error in the configuration file, it will print an error message and then exit. However if smartd is already running, then is told with a HUP signal to re-read the configuration file, and then find a syntax error in this file, it will print an error message and then continue, ignoring the contents of the (faulty) configuration file, as if the HUP signal had never been received.
When smartd is running in debug mode, the INT signal (normally generated from a shell with CONTROL-C) is treated in the same way as a HUP signal: it makes smartd reload its configuration file. To exit smartd use CONTROL-\ (Windows: CONTROL-Break).
On startup, in the absence of the configuration file /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf, the smartd daemon first scans for all devices that support SMART. The scanning is done as follows:
If a 3ware 9000 controller is installed, examine all entries "/dev/sdX,N" for the first logical drive ('unit' "/dev/sdX") and all physical disks ('ports' ",N") detected behind this controller. Same for a second controller if present.
If directive '-d csmi' or no '-d' directive is specified, examine all entries "/dev/csmi[0-9],N" for drives behind an Intel ICHxR controller with RST driver.
Disks behind Areca RAID controllers are not included.
smartd then monitors for all possible SMART errors (corresponding to the '-a' Directive in the configuration file; see the smartd.conf(5) man page).
If this option is not specified, attribute information is written to files '/usr/local/var/lib/smartmontools/attrlog.MODEL-SERIAL.ata.csv'. To disable attribute log files, specify this option with an empty string argument: '-A ""'. MODEL and SERIAL are build from drive identify information, invalid characters are replaced by underline.
If the PREFIX has the form '/path/dir/' (e.g. '/var/lib/smartd/'), then files 'MODEL-SERIAL.ata.csv' are created in directory '/path/dir'. If the PREFIX has the form '/path/name' (e.g. '/var/lib/misc/attrlog-'), then files 'nameMODEL-SERIAL.ata.csv' are created in directory '/path/'. The path must be absolute, except if debug mode is enabled.
By using '-' for FILE, the configuration is read from standard input. This is useful for commands like:
echo /dev/hdb -m user@home -M test | smartd -c - -q onecheckto perform quick and simple checks without a configuration file.
Warning: Mail notification does not work when used.
[Windows only] The "debug" mode can be toggled by the command smartd sigusr2. A new console for debug output is opened when debug mode is enabled.
Note that the superuser can make smartd check the status of the disks at any time by sending it the SIGUSR1 signal, for example with the command:
kill -SIGUSR1 <pid>where <pid> is the process id number of smartd. One may also use:
killall -USR1 smartdfor the same purpose. (Windows: See NOTES below.)
If you would like to have smartd messages logged somewhere other than the default location, this can typically be accomplished with (for example) the following steps:
local3.* /var/log/smartd.logThis tells syslogd to log all the messages from facility local3 to the designated file: /var/log/smartd.log.
Cygwin: If no syslogd is running, the '-l' option has no effect. In this case, all syslog messages are written to Windows event log.
Windows: Some syslog functionality is implemented internally in smartd as follows: If no '-l' option (or '-l daemon') is specified, messages are written to Windows event log or to file ./smartd.log if event log is not available (access denied). By specifying other values of FACILITY, log output is redirected as follows: '-l local0' to file ./smartd.log, '-l local1' to standard output (redirect with '>' to any file), '-l local2' to standard error, '-l local[3-7]': to file ./smartd[1-5].log.
On Cygwin, this allows running smartd as service via cygrunsrv, see NOTES below.
On Windows, this option is not available, use '--service' instead.
nodev - Exit if there are no devices to monitor, or if any errors are found at startup in the configuration file. This is the default.
errors - Exit if there are no devices to monitor, or if any errors are found in the configuration file /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf at startup or whenever it is reloaded.
nodevstartup - Exit if there are no devices to monitor at startup. But continue to run if no devices are found whenever the configuration file is reloaded.
never - Only exit if a fatal error occurs (no remaining system memory, invalid command line arguments). In this mode, even if there are no devices to monitor, or if the configuration file /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf has errors, smartd will continue to run, waiting to load a configuration file listing valid devices.
onecheck - Start smartd in debug mode, then register devices, then check device's SMART status once, and then exit with zero exit status if all of these steps worked correctly.
This last option is intended for 'distribution-writers' who want to create automated scripts to determine whether or not to automatically start up smartd after installing smartmontools. After starting smartd with this command-line option, the distribution's install scripts should wait a reasonable length of time (say ten seconds). If smartd has not exited with zero status by that time, the script should send smartd a SIGTERM or SIGKILL and assume that smartd will not operate correctly on the host. Conversely, if smartd exits with zero status, then it is safe to run smartd in normal daemon mode. If smartd is unable to monitor any devices or encounters other problems then it will return with non-zero exit status.
showtests - Start smartd in debug mode, then register devices, then write a list of future scheduled self tests to stdout, and then exit with zero exit status if all of these steps worked correctly. Device's SMART status is not checked.
This option is intended to test whether the '-s REGEX' directives in smartd.conf will have the desired effect. The output lists the next test schedules, limited to 5 tests per type and device. This is followed by a summary of all tests of each device within the next 90 days.
ioctl - report all ioctl() transactions.
ataioctl - report only ioctl() transactions with ATA devices.
scsiioctl - report only ioctl() transactions with SCSI devices.
Any argument may include a positive integer to specify the level of detail that should be reported. The argument should be followed by a comma then the integer with no spaces. For example, ataioctl,2 The default level is 1, so '-r ataioctl,1' and '-r ataioctl' are equivalent.
If this option is not specified, state information is maintained in files '/usr/local/var/lib/smartmontools/smartd.MODEL-SERIAL.ata.state' for ATA devices and '/usr/local/var/lib/smartmontools/smartd.VENDOR-MODEL-SERIAL.scsi.state' for SCSI devices. To disable state files, specify this option with an empty string argument: '-s ""'. MODEL and SERIAL are build from drive identify information, invalid characters are replaced by underline.
If the PREFIX has the form '/path/dir/' (e.g. '/var/lib/smartd/'), then files 'MODEL-SERIAL.ata.state' are created in directory '/path/dir'. If the PREFIX has the form '/path/name' (e.g. '/var/lib/misc/smartd-'), then files 'nameMODEL-SERIAL.ata.state' are created in directory '/path/'. The path must be absolute, except if debug mode is enabled.
The state information files are read on smartd startup. The files are always (re)written after reading the configuration file, before rereading the configuration file (SIGHUP), before smartd shutdown, and after a check forced by SIGUSR1. After a normal check cycle, a file is only rewritten if an important change (which usually results in a SYSLOG output) occurred.
smartd Runs the daemon in forked mode. This is the normal way to run smartd. Entries are logged to SYSLOG.
smartd -d -i 30 Run in foreground (debug) mode, checking the disk status every 30 seconds.
smartd -q onecheck Registers devices, and checks the status of the devices exactly once. The exit status (the bash $? variable) will be zero if all went well, and nonzero if no devices were detected or some other problem was encountered.
Note that smartmontools provides a start-up script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/init.d/smartd which is responsible for starting and stopping the daemon via the normal init interface. Using this script, you can start smartd by giving the command:
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/init.d/smartd startand stop it by using the command:
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/init.d/smartd stop
'Device: /dev/hda, SMART Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 94 to 93'Note that in this message, the value given is the 'Normalized' not the 'Raw' Attribute value (the disk temperature in this case is about 22 Celsius). The '-R' and '-r' Directives modify this behavior, so that the information is printed with the Raw values as well, for example:
'Device: /dev/hda, SMART Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 94 [Raw 22] to 93 [Raw 23]'Here the Raw values are the actual disk temperatures in Celsius. The way in which the Raw values are printed, and the names under which the Attributes are reported, is governed by the various '-v Num,Description' Directives described previously.
Please see the smartctl manual page for further explanation of the differences between Normalized and Raw Attribute values.
smartd will make log entries at loglevel LOG_CRIT if a SMART Attribute has failed, for example:
'Device: /dev/hdc, Failed SMART Attribute: 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct'
Under Solaris with the default /etc/syslog.conf configuration, messages below loglevel LOG_NOTICE will not be recorded. Hence all smartd messages with loglevel LOG_INFO will be lost. If you want to use the existing daemon facility to log all messages from smartd, you should change /etc/syslog.conf from:
...;daemon.notice;... /var/adm/messages
to read:
...;daemon.info;... /var/adm/messages
Alternatively, you can use a local facility to log messages: please
see the smartd '-l' command-line option described above.
The Cygwin Version of smartd can be run as a service via the cygrunsrv tool. The start-up script provides Cygwin-specific commands to install and remove the service:
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/init.d/smartd install [options] /usr/local/etc/rc.d/init.d/smartd removeThe service can be started and stopped by the start-up script as usual (see EXAMPLES above).
On Windows, the log messages are written to the event log or to a file. See documentation of the '-l FACILITY' option above for details.
On Windows, the following built-in commands can be used to control smartd, if running as a daemon:
'smartd status' - check status
'smartd stop' - stop smartd
'smartd reload' - reread config file
'smartd restart' - restart smartd
'smartd sigusr1' - check disks now
'smartd sigusr2' - toggle debug mode
The Windows Version of smartd has buildin support for services:
'smartd install [options]' installs a service named "smartd" (display name "SmartD Service") using the command line '/INSTALLPATH/smartd.exe --service [options]'. This also installs smartd.exe as a event message file for the Windows event viewer.
'smartd remove' can later be used to remove the service and event message entries from the registry.
Upon startup, the smartd service changes the working directory to its own installation path. If smartd.conf and blat.exe are stored in this directory, no '-c' option and '-M exec' directive is needed.
The debug mode ('-d', '-q onecheck') does not work if smartd is running as service.
The service can be controlled as usual with Windows commands 'net' or 'sc' ('net start smartd', 'net stop smartd').
Pausing the service ('net pause smartd') sets the interval between disk checks ('-i N') to infinite.
Continuing the paused service ('net continue smartd') resets the interval and rereads the configuration file immediately (like SIGHUP):
Continuing a still running service ('net continue smartd' without preceding 'net pause smartd') does not reread configuration but checks disks immediately (like SIGUSR1).
When smartd makes log entries, these are time-stamped. The time stamps are in the computer's local time zone, which is generally set using either the environment variable 'TZ' or using a time-zone file such as /etc/localtime. You may wish to change the timezone while smartd is running (for example, if you carry a laptop to a new time-zone and don't reboot it). Due to a bug in the tzset(3) function of many unix standard C libraries, the time-zone stamps of smartd might not change. For some systems, smartd will work around this problem if the time-zone is set using /etc/localtime. The work-around fails if the time-zone is set using the 'TZ' variable (or a file that it points to).
Casper Dik (Solaris SCSI interface) Douglas Gilbert (SCSI subsystem) Guido Guenther (Autoconf/Automake packaging) Geoffrey Keating (Darwin ATA interface) Eduard Martinescu (FreeBSD interface) Fr['e]d['e]ric L. W. Meunier (Web site and Mailing list) Gabriele Pohl (Web site and Wiki, conversion from CVS to SVN) Keiji Sawada (Solaris ATA interface) Manfred Schwarb (Drive database) Sergey Svishchev (NetBSD interface) David Snyder and Sergey Svishchev (OpenBSD interface) Phil Williams (User interface and drive database) Shengfeng Zhou (Linux/FreeBSD HighPoint RocketRAID interface)Many other individuals have made smaller contributions and corrections.
If you would like to understand better how SMART works, and what it does, a good place to start is with Sections 4.8 and 6.54 of the first volume of the 'AT Attachment with Packet Interface-7' (ATA/ATAPI-7) specification Revision 4b. This documents the SMART functionality which the smartmontools utilities provide access to.
The functioning of SMART was originally defined by the SFF-8035i revision 2 and the SFF-8055i revision 1.4 specifications. These are publications of the Small Form Factors (SFF) Committee.
Links to these and other documents may be found on the Links page of the smartmontools Wiki at http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki/Links .