Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 13:46:52 -0400 From: John Nielsen <lists@jnielsen.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Cc: Robin Becker <robin@reportlab.com>, Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52@dial.pipex.com> Subject: Re: gmirror HD failure detection Message-ID: <200609211346.53159.lists@jnielsen.net> In-Reply-To: <4512664A.1090606@dial.pipex.com> References: <45116E76.6020009@chamonix.reportlab.co.uk> <45117BA6.2040700@chamonix.reportlab.co.uk> <4512664A.1090606@dial.pipex.com>
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On Thursday 21 September 2006 06:15, Alex Zbyslaw wrote: > 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. If you happen to be one of the smart admins who actually reviews the output of the periodic scripts, then simply adding daily_status_gmirror_enable="YES" to /etc/periodic.conf will give you a daily health check. If you want more granularity than a single day, you could use the contents of the periodic script as a starting point for rolling your own. JN
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