From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Sep 21 17:47:00 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 AA76816A407 for ; Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:47:00 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from lists@jnielsen.net) Received: from ns1.jnielsen.net (ns1.jnielsen.net [69.55.238.237]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D7A943D46 for ; Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:46:59 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from lists@jnielsen.net) Received: from localhost (jn@ns1 [69.55.238.237]) (authenticated bits=0) by ns1.jnielsen.net (8.12.9p2/8.12.9) with ESMTP id k8LHktLc032962; Thu, 21 Sep 2006 10:46:56 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from lists@jnielsen.net) From: John Nielsen To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 13:46:52 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.4 References: <45116E76.6020009@chamonix.reportlab.co.uk> <45117BA6.2040700@chamonix.reportlab.co.uk> <4512664A.1090606@dial.pipex.com> In-Reply-To: <4512664A.1090606@dial.pipex.com> X-Face: #X5#Y*q>F:]zT!DegL3z5Xo'^MN[$8k\[4^3rN~wm=s=Uw(sW}R?3b^*f1Wu*.<=?utf-8?q?of=5F4NrS=0A=09P*M/9CpxDo!D6?=)IY1w<9B1jB; tBQf[RU-R<,I)e"$q7N7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200609211346.53159.lists@jnielsen.net> X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV version 0.88.3, clamav-milter version 0.88.3 on ns1.jnielsen.net X-Virus-Status: Clean Cc: Robin Becker , Alex Zbyslaw 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 17:47:00 -0000 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