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Date:      Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:39:28 +0100
From:      Oscar Prieto <oscarmpp@googlemail.com>
To:        Jeremy Chadwick <freebsd@jdc.parodius.com>
Cc:        Harald Schmalzbauer <h.schmalzbauer@omnilan.de>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Martin Sugioarto <martin@sugioarto.com>, Claudius Herder <claudius@ambtec.de>
Subject:   Re: problems with AHCI on FreeBSD 8.2
Message-ID:  <CAK9wqRqU_DSFTYODtwbV6hbs4vqF2MXY3f0DTba-TDRqq9e4zA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20120214203123.GA5959@icarus.home.lan>
References:  <20120214100513.GA94501@icarus.home.lan> <20120214135435.GQ2010@equilibrium.bsdes.net> <20120214141601.GA98986@icarus.home.lan> <4F3A83DE.3000200@ambtec.de> <20120214165029.GA1852@icarus.home.lan> <4F3A971F.9040407@omnilan.de> <20120214192319.44ff7aff@zelda.sugioarto.com> <4F3AB4F0.9010002@omnilan.de> <20120214205143.2a6b9c87@zelda.sugioarto.com> <CAK9wqRqR3KMUDchFs9L5bVV_CZUF_DEAx_i_Rp5StAa_%2BdGbGw@mail.gmail.com> <20120214203123.GA5959@icarus.home.lan>

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Thank you again Jeremy, sure it helps!

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 9:31 PM, Jeremy Chadwick
<freebsd@jdc.parodius.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 09:19:02PM +0100, Oscar Prieto wrote:
>> Thank you Jeremy, i'm already checking your links.
>>
>> When i installed smartd i configured a daily short test and a weekly
>> long one for all the drives while the machine remains mostly unused,
>> never thought it could be a problem reading the documentation and info
>> around.
>>
>> # /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf
>> /dev/ada0 -a -o on -S on -s (S/../.././03|L/../../2/07)
>> /dev/ada1 -a -o on -S on -s (S/../.././04|L/../../3/07)
>> /dev/ada2 -a -o on -S on -s (S/../.././05|L/../../4/07)
>> /dev/ada3 -a -o on -S on -s (S/../.././06|L/../../5/07)
>
> The problem is that, quite honestly, these do you zero good. =A0All it do=
es
> is make a mess (per se) of the SMART self-test log.
>
> Take for example your situation with ada3: smartd(8) told you that the
> number of pending sectors increased to 5, and uncorrected increased to
> 1. =A0That's really all you need to know at that point. =A0If you want to
> know the LBA numbers which are problematic, you can manually intervene.
>
> The point is: the drive itself is going to notice problematic or bad
> sectors quicker than periodic short or long or surface scan tests will.
> Let the drive do its thing normally and only use SMART tests when
> there's indication something is wrong.
>
>> I'll remove the checks, do you advice for removing the daemon altogether=
?
>
> smartd(8) is useful because it keeps track of attributes which change in
> value and logs data to syslog (if I remember right), thus you have an
> exact time/date when an attribute changed. =A0This is especially useful
> for things pertaining to sector/physical media problems.
>
> As such, I tend to recommend folks using smartd(8) properly tune their
> smartd.conf to only monitor specific attributes. =A0This varies from driv=
e
> to drive, but the key ones are things like attributes 5, 10, 11, 192,
> 193, 194 (if you want temperature logging), 196, 197, 198, 199, and 200.
> I'm speaking strictly for Western Digital disks here.
>
> The stock defaults, if I remember right, are to "monitor everything",
> which really doesn't work well given that so many vendors encode their
> RAW_VALUE fields in proprietary/vendor-specific formats. =A0People will
> often monitor things like the Hardware_ECC_Recovered attribute and start
> "freaking out" once day when the value goes from 0 to 838938239 or
> something larger. =A0Attribute data formats are not part of the ATA
> standard, so vendors choose to encode them. =A0Plus, not many admins that
> I've run into (honest) know what that attribute actually means
> disk-wise (hint: it's 100% normal for sector ECC to happen at all times;
> magnetic media is not perfect, that's what the per-sector ECC section is
> for!)
>
> However: people don't understand what SMART attribute acquisition
> actually does behind the scenes -- it results in the disk having to read
> from the HPA area (not user accessible or within LBA regions), which
> means seeking + moving the arms to an area, reading, then reporting all
> of this back. =A0Thus, it impacts I/O performance. =A0This is why I don't
> use smartd(8) on any of our systems. =A0But if I was to use it? =A0I woul=
d
> have it poll maybe every 120 minutes, rather than every 30. =A0It all
> depends on the system/load/etc.. =A0I've seen people poll every 5 minutes
> (I think they're absolutely crazy/paranoid). =A0Their systems, their
> problem. =A0:-)
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> --
> | Jeremy Chadwick =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0=
 =A0 =A0 jdc@parodius.com |
> | Parodius Networking =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 http://www.=
parodius.com/ |
> | UNIX Systems Administrator =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 Mountain Vie=
w, CA, US |
> | Making life hard for others since 1977. =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 PGP 4BD=
6C0CB |
>



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