From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Sep 21 10:15:46 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 E757816A412 for ; Thu, 21 Sep 2006 10:15:46 +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 7899543D46 for ; Thu, 21 Sep 2006 10:15:45 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from xfb52@dial.pipex.com) Received: from [172.23.170.137] (helo=anti-virus01-08) by smtp-out2.blueyonder.co.uk with smtp (Exim 4.52) id 1GQLaq-0003CI-AT; Thu, 21 Sep 2006 11:15:44 +0100 Received: from [82.41.35.166] (helo=[192.168.0.2]) by asmtp-out4.blueyonder.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.52) id 1GQLak-0004NX-IB; Thu, 21 Sep 2006 11:15:38 +0100 Message-ID: <4512664A.1090606@dial.pipex.com> Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 11:15:38 +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> <54db43990609201002x503b691fxe3b828ca81f13c5a@mail.gmail.com> <004f01c6dcd8$afcd6cc0$0200a8c0@satellite> <45117BA6.2040700@chamonix.reportlab.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <45117BA6.2040700@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: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 10:15:47 -0000 Robin Becker wrote: > Dave wrote: > >> Hi, >> I've got smartd going on a gmirror system, however when smartd >> starts up it says it can't find the various drives. I've tried both >> the autodetection line as well as specifying the individual drives. >> If this does work i'd like to know about it as i believe i might have >> one failing drive, but am not sure which one. >> Thanks. >> Dave. >> > > > well as root I can certainly run smartctl -a /dev/ad4 (or /dev/ad6) so > I assume smartd could. > > I like the idea of using gmirror status -s , but I don't know what the > results would be if one of the disks were going bad. Would it change > from COMPLETE to DEGRADED suddenly? I would expect gmirror to report a problem when a disk gad *gone* bad. Going bad from a SMART point of view can mean, for example, too high a rate of read retries or too many bad sectors remapped. At that point the drive is technically working, so there is nothing technically wrong with the array status. In such a case SMART would just be telling you that the disk is likely to go kablooey soon; time for backups, new drive etc. etc. Something like gmirror status -s you can presumably run even every five minutes from cron; if you weed out the good results you'll only get email if something does go wrong. Use both approaches since they tell you different things which just happen some of the time to coincide. --Alex