From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Sep 20 17:17:54 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8DA3016A47C for ; Wed, 20 Sep 2006 17:17:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from xfb52@dial.pipex.com) Received: from smtp-out2.blueyonder.co.uk (smtp-out2.blueyonder.co.uk [195.188.213.5]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 282BB43D49 for ; Wed, 20 Sep 2006 17:17:53 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from xfb52@dial.pipex.com) Received: from [172.23.170.140] (helo=anti-virus02-07) by smtp-out2.blueyonder.co.uk with smtp (Exim 4.52) id 1GQ5hn-0005zC-W6; Wed, 20 Sep 2006 18:17:52 +0100 Received: from [82.41.35.166] (helo=[192.168.0.2]) by asmtp-out5.blueyonder.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.52) id 1GQ5Tp-00037I-B3; Wed, 20 Sep 2006 18:03:25 +0100 Message-ID: <4511745C.2080701@dial.pipex.com> Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 18:03:24 +0100 From: Alex Zbyslaw User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-GB; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20060515 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Robin Becker References: <45116E76.6020009@chamonix.reportlab.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <45116E76.6020009@chamonix.reportlab.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: gmirror HD failure detection X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 17:17:54 -0000 Robin Becker wrote: > After using Dru Lavigne's excellent article http://tinyurl.com/da66a > about Raid-1 I have a full Raid-1 mirror on a new rack server. I'm > wondering if anyone can tell me how best to monitor the hardware > status to detect imminent failure of one of the disks? Do I use > something like smartctl in a cron or what? Assuming that the disks support SMART then just read the man page for smartd. No need for cron. You can also schedule "short" and "long" tests to run in off hours. smartmontools is easy to uninstall if it doesn't work for you. However, this will tell you that a disk is failing (or failed) which is not quite the same as array status. An array (theoretically) might be sub-optimal for non-SMART reasons. Someone familiar with gmirror will have to answer that bit... but gmirror status -s looks from the man page like it might be interesting and *that* could be run from cron and parsed to weed out "status OK results". --Alex