SMARTD.CONF(5)

NAME
smartd.conf - S.M.A.R.T. Monitoring Daemon Configuration File

DESCRIPTION
/etc/smartd.conf is the configuration file for the smartd daemon, which monitors the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) system built into many ATA-3 and later ATA, IDE and SCSI-3 hard drives. Note that smartd only reads the configuration file at start-up: changes to the configuration file take effect only after the smartd daemon is restarted. If you send a HUP signal to smartd it will log a polite message saying that it ignores this signal and that it has not re-read the configuration file.

CONFIGURATION FILE /etc/smartd.conf
In the absence of a configuration file, smartd will try to open the 12 ATA devices /dev/hd[a-l] and the 26 SCSI devices /dev/sd[a-z]. This can be annoying if you have an ATA or SCSI device that hangs or misbehaves when receiving SMART commands. Even if this causes no problems, you may be annoyed by the string of error log messages about block-major devices that can't be found, and SCSI devices that can't be opened. One can avoid this problem, and gain more control over the types of events monitored by smartd, by using the configuration file /etc/smartd.conf. This file contains a list of devices to monitor, with one device per line. An example file is included with the smartmontools distribution, and is normally placed in /etc/smartd.conf.example. If smartmontools was properly installed on your system, you will also find this sample configuration file in /usr/share/doc/smartmontools-5.1/. For security, the configuration file should not be writable by anyone but root. The syntax of the file is as follows:

    There should be one device listed per line, although you may have lines that are entirely comments or white space. Any text following a hash sign (#) and up to the end of the line is taken to be a comment, and ignored. Lines may be continued by using a backslash (\) as the last non-whitespace or non-comment item on a line.

Here is an example configuration file. It's for illustrative purposes only; please don't copy it onto your system without reading to the end of the DIRECTIVES Section below!
################################################
# This is an example smartd startup config
# file /etc/smartd.conf for monitoring three
# ATA disks and two SCSI disks.
#
# First ATA disk on each of two interfaces:
#
  /dev/hda -a -m admin@yoyodyne.com,root@localhost
  /dev/hdc -a -I 194 -I 5 -i 12
#
# SCSI disks. Send a TEST warning email to admin on
# startup.
#
  /dev/sda
  /dev/sdc -m admin@yoyodyne.com -M test
#
# Strange device. It's SCSI:
#
  /dev/weird -d scsi
#
# The following line enables monitoring of the
# ATA Error Log and the Self-Test Error Log.
# It also tracks changes in both Prefailure
# and Usage Attributes, apart from Attributes
# 9, 194, and 231, and shows continued lines:
#
  /dev/hdd -l error \
           -l selftest \
           -t \      # Attributes not tracked:
           -I 194 \  # temperature
           -I 231 \  # also temperature
           -I 9      # power-on hours
#
################################################

CONFIGURATION FILE DIRECTIVES

If the first non-comment entry in the configuration file is the text string DEVICESCAN in capital letters, then smartd will ignore any remaining lines in the configuration file, and will scan for devices. DEVICESCAN may optionally be followed by Directives that will apply to all devices that are found in the scan. Please see below for additional details.

The following are the Directives that may appear following the device name or DEVICESCAN on any line of the /etc/smartd.conf configuration file. Note that these are NOT command-line options for smartd. The Directives below may appear in any order, following the device name. For an ATA device, if no Directives appear, then the device will be monitored as if the '-a' Directive (monitor all SMART properties) had been given. If a SCSI disk is listed, it will be monitored at the only implemented level: roughly equivalent to using the '-H' option for an ATA disk. So with the exception of '-d', '-m', and '-M', the Directives below are ignored for SCSI disks. For SCSI disks, the '-m' Directive sends a warning email if the SMART status indicates a disk failure or problem.

-d TYPE
    Specifies the type of the device. This will prevent smartd from issuing SCSI commands to an ATA device and vice versa. The valid arguments to this Directive are ata and scsi. In the absence of this Directive, smartd will first attempt to guess the device type by looking at whether the sixth character in the device name is an 's' or an 'h'. This will work for device names like /dev/hda or /dev/sdb. If smartd can't guess from this sixth character, then it will simply try to access the device using first ATA and then SCSI ioctl()s.

-T TYPE
    Specifies how tolerant smartd should be of SMART command failures. The valid arguments to this Directive are: normal - do not try to monitor the disk if a mandatory SMART command fails, but continue if an optional SMART command fails. This is the default. permissive - try to monitor the disk even if it appears to lack SMART capabilities. This may be required for some old disks (prior to ATA-3 revision 4) that implemented SMART before the SMART standards were incorporated into the ATA/ATAPI Specifications. [Please see the smartctl -T command-line option.]

-o VALUE
    Enables or disables SMART Automatic Offline Testing when smartd starts up and has no further effect. The valid arguments to this Directive are on and off. The delay between tests is vendor-specific, but is typically four hours. [Please see the smartctl -o command-line option.]

-S VALUE
    Enables or disables Attribute Autosave when smartd starts up and has no further effect. The valid arguments to this Directive are on and off. [Please see the smartctl -S command-line option.]

-H  Check the SMART health status of the disk. If any Prefailure Attributes are less than or equal to their threshold values, then disk failure is predicted in less than 24 hours, and a message at priority 'CRITICAL' will be logged to syslog. [Please see the smartctl -H command-line option.]

-l TYPE
    Reports increases in the number of errors in one of the two SMART logs. The valid arguments to this Directive are: error - report if that the number of ATA errors reported in the ATA Error Log has increased since the last check. selftest - report if that the number of errors reported in the SMART Self-Test Log has increased since the last check. Note that such errors will only be logged if you run self-tests on the disk (and it fails the tests!). [Self-Tests can be run by using the '-t short' and '-t long' options of smartctl and the results of the testing can be observed using the smartctl '-l selftest' command-line option.] [Please see the smartctl -l command-line option.]

-f  Check for 'failure' of any Usage Attributes. If these Attributes are less than or equal to the threshold, it does NOT indicate imminent disk failure. It ""indicates an advisory condition where the usage or age of the device has exceeded its intended design life period."" [Please see the smartctl -A command-line option.]

-m ADD
    Send a warning email to the email address ADD if the '-H', '-l', or '-f' Directives detect a failure or a new error. This Directive only works in conjunction with these other Directives (or with the equivalent default '-a' Directive). To prevent your email in-box from getting filled up with warning messages, by default only a single warning will be sent for each of the enabled test types, '-H', '-l', or '-f', even if more than one failure or error is detected or if the failure or error persists. [This behavior can be modified; see the '-M' Directive below.] To send email to more than one user, please use the following form for the address: user1@add1,user2@add2,...,userN@addN (with no spaces). To test that email is being sent correctly, use the '-M test' Directive described below to send one test email message on smartd startup. By default, email is sent using the system mail command. In order that smartd find the mail command (normally /bin/mail) an executable named 'mail' must be in the path of the shell or environment from which smartd was started. If you wish to specify an explicit path to the mail executable (for example /usr/local/bin/mail) or a custom script to run, please use the '-M exec' Directive below. Note that there is a special argument <nomailer> which can be given to the '-m' Directive in conjunction with the '-M exec' Directive. Please see below for an explanation of its effect.

-M TYPE
    These Directives modify the behavior of the smartd email warnings enabled with the '-m' email Directive described above. These '-M' Directives only work in conjunction with the '-m' Directive and can not be used without it. Multiple -M Directives may be given. If conflicting -M Directives are given (example: -M once -M daily) then the final one (in the example, -M daily) is used. The valid arguments to the -M Directive are: once - send only one warning email for each type of disk problem detected. This is the default. daily - send additional warning reminder emails, once per day, for each type of disk problem detected. diminishing - send additional warning reminder emails, after a one-day interval, then a two-day interval, then a four-day interval, and so on for each type of disk problem detected. Each interval is twice as long as the previous interval. test - send a single test email immediately upon smartd startup. This allows one to verify that any email is correctly delivered. exec PATH - run the executable PATH instead of the default mail command, when smartd needs to send email. PATH must point to an executable binary file or script. By setting PATH to point to a customized script, you can make smartd perform useful tricks when a disk problem is detected (beeping the console, shutting down the machine, broadcasting warnings to all logged-in users, etc.) But please be careful. smartd will block until the executable PATH returns, so if your executable hangs, then smartd will also hang. Some sample scripts are included in /usr/share/doc/smartmontools-5.1/examplescripts/. The return status of the executable is recorded by smartd in SYSLOG, but the executable's STDOUT and STDERR are directed to /dev/null, so if you wish to leave some other record behind, the executable must send mail or write to a file or device. Before running the executable, smartd sets a number of environment variables. These environment variables may be used to control the executable's behavior. The environment variables exported by smartd are:
    SMARTD_MAILER is set to the argument of -M exec, if present or else to 'mail' (examples: /bin/mail, mail).
    SMARTD_DEVICE is set to the device path (examples: /dev/hda, /dev/sdb).
    SMARTD_DEVICETYPE is set to the device type (possible values: ata, scsi).
    SMARTD_FAILTYPE gives the reason for the warning or message email. The possible values that it takes, and their significance, are: emailtest (this is an email test message); health (the SMART health status indicates imminent failure); usage (a usage Attribute has failed); selftest (the number of self-test failures has increased); and errorcount (the number of errors in the ATA error log has increased).
    SMARTD_ADDRESS is set to the address argument ADD of the '-m' Directive, unless ADD is <nomailer>. This is a comma-delineated list of email addresses (example: admin@yoyodyne.com).
    SMARTD_MESSAGE is set to the warning email message string from smartd. This message string contains space characters and is NOT quoted. So to use $SMARTD_MESSAGE in a bash script you should probably enclose it in double quotes.
    SMARTD_TFIRST is a text string giving the time and date at which the first problem of this type was reported. This text string contains space characters and no newlines, and is NOT quoted. For example:
    Sun Feb 9 14:58:19 2003 CST
    SMARTD_TFIRSTEPOCH is an integer, which is the unix epoch (number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970) for SMARTD_TFIRST. The shell which is used to run PATH is system-dependent. For vanilla linux/glibc it's bash. For other systems, the man page for system (3) should say what shell is used. If the '-m ADD' Directive is given with a normal address argument, then the executable pointed to by PATH will be run in a shell with STDIN receiving the body of the email message, and with the same command-line arguments:
    -s "$SMARTD_SUBJECT" $SMARTD_ADDRESS
    that would normally be provided to 'mail'. Examples include:
    -m user@home -M exec /bin/mail
    -m admin@work -M exec /usr/local/bin/mailto
    -m root -M exec /Example_1/bash/script/below
    If the '-m ADD' Directive is given with the special address argument <nomailer> then the executable pointed to by PATH is run in a shell with no STDIN and no command-line arguments, for example:
    -m <nomailer> -M exec /Example_2/bash/script/below
    Some EXAMPLES of scripts that can be used with the '-M exec' Directive are given below. Some sample scripts are also included in /usr/share/doc/smartmontools-5.1/examplescripts/.

-p  Report anytime that a Prefail Attribute has changed its value since the last check, 30 minutes ago. [Please see the smartctl -A command-line option.]

-u  Report anytime that a Usage Attribute has changed its value since the last check, N seconds ago. [Please see the smartctl -A command-line option.]

-t  Equivalent to turning on the two previous flags '-p' and '-u'. Tracks changes in all device Attributes. [Please see the smartctl -A command-line option.]

-i ID
    Ignore device Attribute number ID when checking for failure of Usage Attributes. ID must be a decimal integer in the range from 1 to 255. This Directive modifies the behavior of the '-f' Directive and has no effect without it. This is useful, for example, if you have a very old disk and don't want to keep getting messages about the hours-on-lifetime Attribute (usually Attribute 9) failing. This Directive may appear multiple times for a single device, if you want to ignore multiple Attributes.

-I ID
    Ignore device Attribute ID when tracking changes in the Attribute values. ID must be a decimal integer in the range from 1 to 255. This Directive modifies the behavior of the '-p', '-u', and '-t' Directives and has no effect without one of them. This is useful, for example, if one of the device Attributes is the disk temperature (usually Attribute 194 or 231). It's annoying to get reports each time the temperature changes. This Directive may appear multiple times for a single device, if you want to ignore multiple Attributes.

-v N,OPTION
    Modifies the labeling for Attribute N, for disks which use non-standard Attribute definitions. Valid arguments to this Directive are: 9,minutes - Raw Attribute number 9 is power-on time in minutes (not hours). 9,temp - Raw Attribute number 9 is the disk temperature in Celsius. 220,temp - Raw attribute number 220 is the disk temperature in Celsius. A table of hard drive models, listing which Attribute corresponds to temperature, can be found at: http://coredump.free.fr/linux/hddtemp.db

-a  Equivalent to turning on all of the following Directives: '-H' to check the SMART health status, '-f' to report failures of Usage (rather than Prefail) Attributes, '-t' to track changes in both Prefailure and Usage Attributes, '-l selftest' to report increases in the number of Self-Test Log errors, and '-l error' to report increases in the number of ATA errors. Note that -a is the default for ATA devices. If none of these other Directives is given, then -a is assumed.

#   Comment: ignore the remainder of the line.

\   Continuation character: if this is the last non-white or non-comment character on a line, then the following line is a continuation of the current one.

If you are not sure which Directives to use, I suggest experimenting for a few minutes with smartctl to see what SMART functionality your disk(s) support(s). If you do not like voluminous syslog messages, a good choice of smartd configuration file Directives might be:
-H -l selftest -l error -f.
If you want more frequent information, use: -a.

ADDITIONAL DETAILS ABOUT DEVICESCAN
    If the first non-comment entry in the configuration file is the text string DEVICESCAN in capital letters, then smartd will ignore any remaining lines in the configuration file, and will scan for devices. If DEVICESCAN is not followed by any Directives, then smartd will scan for both ATA and SCSI devices, and will monitor all possible SMART properties of any devices that are found. DEVICESCAN may optionally be followed by any valid Directives, which will be applied to all devices that are found in the scan. For example
    DEVICESCAN -m root@yoyodyne.com
    will scan for all devices, and then monitor them. It will send one email warning per device for any problems that are found.
    DEVICESCAN -d ata -m root@yoyodyne.com
    will do the same, but restricts the scan to ATA devices only.
    DEVICESCAN -H -d ata -m root@yoyodyne.com
    will do the same, but only monitors the SMART health status of the devices, (rather than the default -a, which monitors all SMART properties).

EXAMPLES OF SHELL SCRIPTS FOR '-M exec'
    These are two examples of shell scripts that can be used with the '-M exec PATH' Directive described previously. The paths to these scripts and similar executables is the PATH argument to the '-M exec PATH' Directive. Example 1: This script is for use with '-m ADDRESS -M exec PATH'. It appends the output of smartctl -a to the output of the smartd email warning message and sends it to ADDRESS.
    #! /bin/bash
    # Save the email message (STDIN) to a file:
    cat > /root/msg

    # Append the output of smartctl -a to the message:
    /usr/sbin/smartctl -a $SMARTD_DEVICE >> /root/msg

    # Now email the message to the user at address ADD:
    /bin/mail -s "$SMARTD_SUBJECT" $SMARTD_ADDRESS < /root/msg
    Example 2: This script is for use with '-m <nomailer> -M exec PATH'. It warns all users about a disk problem, waits 30 seconds, and then powers down the machine.
    #! /bin/bash
    # Warn all users of a problem
    wall 'Problem detected with disk: ' $SMARTD_DEVICE
    wall 'Warning message from smartd is: ' "$SMARTD_MESSAGE"
    wall 'Shutting down machine in 30 seconds... '

    # Wait half a minute
    sleep 30

    # Power down the machine
    /usr/sbin/shutdown -hf now
    Some example scripts are distributed with the smartmontools package, in /usr/share/doc/smartmontools-5.1/examplescripts/.

AUTHOR
Bruce Allen smartmontools-support@lists.sourceforge.net
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Physics Department

CREDITS
This code was derived from the smartsuite package, written by Michael Cornwell, and from the previous ucsc smartsuite package. It extends these to cover ATA-5 disks. This code was originally developed as a Senior Thesis by Michael Cornwell at the Concurrent Systems Laboratory (now part of the Storage Systems Research Center), Jack Baskin School of Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz. http://ssrc.soe.ucsc.edu/.

HOME PAGE FOR SMARTMONTOOLS:
Please see the following web site for updates, further documentation, bug reports and patches:
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

SEE ALSO:
smartd (8), smartctl (8), syslogd (8)

CVS ID OF THIS PAGE:
$Id: smartd.conf.5,v 1.30 2003/02/16 16:05:41 ballen4705 Exp $