smartd

Read smartd configuration Directives from FILE, instead of from the default location /etc/smartd.conf (Windows: ./smartd.conf). If FILE does not exist, then smartd will print an error message and exit with nonzero status. Thus, \'-c /etc/smartd.conf\' can be used to verify the existence of the default configuration file. By using \'-\' for FILE, the configuration is read from standard input. This is useful for commands like:

echo /dev/hdb -m user@home -M test | smartd -c - -q onecheck

to perform quick and simple checks without a configuration file.

Runs smartd in "debug" mode. In this mode, it displays status information to STDOUT rather than logging it to SYSLOG and does not fork(2) into the background and detach from the controlling terminal. In this mode, smartd also prints more verbose information about what it is doing than when operating in "daemon" mode. In this mode, the QUIT signal (normally generated from a terminal with CONTROL-C) makes smartd reload its configuration file. Please use CONTROL- to exit (Cygwin: 2x CONTROL-C, Windows: CONTROL-Break). Windows only: The "debug" mode can be toggled by the command smartd sigusr2. A new console for debug output is opened when debug mode is enabled.

Prints a list (to STDOUT) of all the possible Directives which may appear in the configuration file /etc/smartd.conf, and then exits. These Directives are also described later in this man page. They may appear in the configuration file following the device name.

Prints usage message to STDOUT and exits.

Sets the interval between disk checks to N seconds, where N is a decimal integer. The minimum allowed value is ten and the maximum is the largest positive integer that can be represented on your system (often 2^31-1). The default is 1800 seconds. Note that the superuser can make smartd check the status of the disks at any time by sending it the SIGUSR1 signal, for example with the command:

kill -SIGUSR1 <pid>

where <pid> is the process id number of smartd. One may also use:

killall -USR1 smartd

for the same purpose. (Windows: See NOTES below.)

Uses syslog facility FACILITY to log the messages from smartd. Here FACILITY is one of local0, local1, ..., local7, or daemon [default]. If this command-line option is not used, then by default messages from smartd are logged to the facility daemon. If you would like to have smartd messages logged somewhere other than the default /var/log/messages location, this can typically be accomplished with (for example) the following steps:

For more detailed information, please refer to the man pages for syslog.conf, syslogd, and syslog. You may also want to modify the log rotation configuration files; see the man pages for logrotate and examine your system\'s /etc/logrotate.conf file. Cygwin: Support for syslogd as described above is available starting with Cygwin 1.5.15. On older releases or if no local syslogd is running, the \'-l\' option has no effect. In this case, all syslog messages are written to Windows event log or to file C:/CYGWIN_SYSLOG.TXT if the event log is not available. Windows: Some syslog functionality is implemented internally in smartd as follows: If no \'-l\' option (or \'-l daemon\') is specified, messages are written to Windows event log or to file ./smartd.log if event log is not available (Win9x/ME or access denied). By specifying other values of FACILITY, log output is redirected as follows: \'-l local0\' to file ./smartd.log, \'-l local1\' to standard output (redirect with \'>\' to any file), \'-l local2\' to standard error, \'-l local[3-7]\': to file ./smartd[1-5].log. When using the event log, the enclosed utility syslogevt.exe should be registered as an event message file to avoid error messages from the event viewer. Use \'syslogevt -r smartd\' to register, \'syslogevt -u smartd\' to unregister and \'syslogevt\' for more help.

Writes pidfile NAME containing the smartd Process ID number (PID). To avoid symlink attacks make sure the directory to which pidfile is written is only writable for root. Without this option, or if the --debug option is given, no PID file is written on startup. If smartd is killed with a maskable signal then the pidfile is removed.

Specifies when, if ever, smartd should exit. The valid arguments are to this option are: nodev - Exit if there are no devices to monitor, or if any errors are found at startup in the configuration file. This is the default. errors - Exit if there are no devices to monitor, or if any errors are found in the configuration file /etc/smartd.conf at startup or whenever it is reloaded. nodevstartup - Exit if there are no devices to monitor at startup. But continue to run if no devices are found whenever the configuration file is reloaded. never - Only exit if a fatal error occurs (no remaining system memory, invalid command line arguments). In this mode, even if there are no devices to monitor, or if the configuration file /etc/smartd.conf has errors, smartd will continue to run, waiting to load a configuration file listing valid devices. onecheck - Start smartd in debug mode, then register devices, then check device\'s SMART status once, and then exit with zero exit status if all of these steps worked correctly. This last option is intended for \'distribution-writers\' who want to create automated scripts to determine whether or not to automatically start up smartd after installing smartmontools. After starting smartd with this command-line option, the distribution\'s install scripts should wait a reasonable length of time (say ten seconds). If smartd has not exited with zero status by that time, the script should send smartd a SIGTERM or SIGKILL and assume that smartd will not operate correctly on the host. Conversely, if smartd exits with zero status, then it is safe to run smartd in normal daemon mode. If smartd is unable to monitor any devices or encounters other problems then it will return with non-zero exit status. showtests - Start smartd in debug mode, then register devices, then write a list of future scheduled self tests to stdout, and then exit with zero exit status if all of these steps worked correctly. Device's SMART status is not checked. This option is intended to test whether the '-s REGEX' directives in smartd.conf will have the desired effect. The output lists the next test schedules, limited to 5 tests per type and device. This is followed by a summary of all tests of each device within the next 90 days.

Intended primarily to help smartmontools developers understand the behavior of smartmontools on non-conforming or poorly-conforming hardware. This option reports details of smartd transactions with the device. The option can be used multiple times. When used just once, it shows a record of the ioctl() transactions with the device. When used more than once, the detail of these ioctl() transactions are reported in greater detail. The valid arguments to this option are: ioctl - report all ioctl() transactions. ataioctl - report only ioctl() transactions with ATA devices. scsiioctl - report only ioctl() transactions with SCSI devices. Any argument may include a positive integer to specify the level of detail that should be reported. The argument should be followed by a comma then the integer with no spaces. For example, ataioctl,2 The default level is 1, so \'-r ataioctl,1\' and \'-r ataioctl\' are equivalent.

Cygwin and Windows only: Enables smartd to run as a Windows service. On Cygwin, this option simply prevents forking into background mode to allow running smartd as service via cygrunsrv, see NOTES below. On Windows, this option enables the buildin service support. The option must be specified in the service command line as the first argument. It should not be used from console. See NOTES below for details.

Prints license, copyright, and CVS version information onto STDOUT and then exits. Please include this information if you are reporting bugs, or have specific questions about the behavior of smartd.

Specifies the type of the device. This Directive may be used multiple times for one device, but the arguments ata, scsi, sat, marvell, cciss,N and 3ware,N are mutually-exclusive. If more than one is given then smartd will use the last one which appears. If none of these three arguments is given, then 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, and corresponds to choosing ata or scsi respectively. 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. The valid arguments to this Directive are: ata - the device type is ATA. This prevents smartd from issuing SCSI commands to an ATA device. scsi - the device type is SCSI. This prevents smartd from issuing ATA commands to a SCSI device. sat - the device type is SCSI to ATA Translation (SAT). smartd will generate ATA (smart) commands and then package them in the SAT defined ATA PASS THROUGH SCSI commands. The commands are then routed through the SCSI pass through interface to the operating system. There are two types of ATA PASS THROUGH SCSI commands: a 12 byte and 16 byte variant. smartd can use either and defaults to the 16 byte variant. This can be overridden with this syntax: \'-d sat,12\' or \'-d sat,16\'. marvell - Under Linux, interact with SATA disks behind Marvell chip-set controllers (using the Marvell rather than libata driver). 3ware,N - the device consists of one or more ATA disks connected to a 3ware RAID controller. The non-negative integer N (in the range from 0 to 15 inclusive) denotes which disk on the controller is monitored. In log files and email messages this disk will be identified as 3ware_disk_XX with XX in the range from 00 to 15 inclusive. This Directive may at first appear confusing, because the 3ware controller is a SCSI device (such as /dev/sda) and should be listed as such in the the configuration file. However when the \'-d 3ware,N\' Directive is used, then the corresponding disk is addressed using native ATA commands which are \'passed through\' the SCSI driver. All ATA Directives listed in this man page may be used. Note that while you may use any of the 3ware SCSI logical devices /dev/sd? to address any of the physical disks (3ware ports), error and log messages will make the most sense if you always list the 3ware SCSI logical device corresponding to the particular physical disks. Please see the smartctl man page for further details. ATA disks behind 3ware controllers may alternatively be accessed via a character device interface /dev/twe0-15 (3ware 6000/7000/8000 controllers) and /dev/twa0-15 (3ware 9000 series controllers). Note that the 9000 series controllers may only be accessed using the character device interface /dev/twa0-15 and not the SCSI device interface /dev/sd?. Please see the smartctl man page for further details. Note that older 3w-xxxx drivers do not pass the \'Enable Autosave\' (-S on) and \'Enable Automatic Offline\' (-o on) commands to the disk, if the SCSI interface is used, and produce these types of harmless syslog error messages instead: \'3w-xxxx: tw_ioctl(): Passthru size (123392) too big\'. This can be fixed by upgrading to version 1.02.00.037 or later of the 3w-xxxx driver, or by applying a patch to older versions. See http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ for instructions. Alternatively use the character device interfaces /dev/twe0-15 (3ware 6/7/8000 series controllers) or /dev/twa0-15 (3ware 9000 series controllers). cciss,N - the device consists of one or more SCSI disks connected to a cciss RAID controller. The non-negative integer N (in the range from 0 to 15 inclusive) denotes which disk on the controller is monitored. In log files and email messages this disk will be identified as cciss_disk_XX with XX in the range from 00 to 15 inclusive. 3ware and cciss controllers are currently ONLY supported under Linux. hpt,L/M/N - the device consists of one or more ATA disks connected to a HighPoint RocketRAID controller. The integer L is the controller id, the integer M is the channel number, and the integer N is the PMPort number if it is available. The allowed values of L are from 1 to 4 inclusive, M are from 1 to 8 inclusive and N from 1 to 4 if PMPort available. And also these values are limited by the model of the HighPoint RocketRAID controller. In log files and email messages this disk will be identified as hpt_X/X/X and X/X/X is the same as L/M/N, note if no N indicated, N set to the default value 1. HighPoint RocketRAID controllers are currently ONLY supported under Linux. removable - the device or its media is removable. This indicates to smartd that it should continue (instead of exiting, which is the default behavior) if the device does not appear to be present when smartd is started. This Directive may be used in conjunction with the other \'-d\' Directives.

This \'nocheck\' Directive is used to prevent a disk from being spun-up when it is periodically polled by smartd. ATA disks have five different power states. In order of increasing power consumption they are: \'OFF\', \'SLEEP\', \'STANDBY\', \'IDLE\', and \'ACTIVE\'. Typically in the OFF, SLEEP, and STANDBY modes the disk\'s platters are not spinning. But usually, in response to SMART commands issued by smartd, the disk platters are spun up. So if this option is not used, then a disk which is in a low-power mode may be spun up and put into a higher-power mode when it is periodically polled by smartd. Note that if the disk is in SLEEP mode when smartd is started, then it won't respond to smartd commands, and so the disk won't be registered as a device for smartd to monitor. If a disk is in any other low-power mode, then the commands issued by smartd to register the disk will probably cause it to spin-up. The \'-n\' (nocheck) Directive specifies if smartd\'s periodic checks should still be carried out when the device is in a low-power mode. It may be used to prevent a disk from being spun-up by periodic smartd polling. The allowed values of POWERMODE are: never - smartd will poll (check) the device regardless of its power mode. This may cause a disk which is spun-down to be spun-up when smartd checks it. This is the default behavior if the '-n' Directive is not given. sleep - check the device unless it is in SLEEP mode. standby - check the device unless it is in SLEEP or STANDBY mode. In these modes most disks are not spinning, so if you want to prevent a laptop disk from spinning up each time that smartd polls, this is probably what you want. idle - check the device unless it is in SLEEP, STANDBY or IDLE mode. In the IDLE state, most disks are still spinning, so this is probably not what you want. When a self test is scheduled (see \'-s\' Directive below), the \'-n\' Directive is ignored, and all tests are carried out. When a periodic test is skipped, smartd normally writes an informal log message. The message can be suppressed by appending the option \',q\' to POWERMODE (like \'-n standby,q\'). This prevents a laptop disk from spinning up due to this message.

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. This may also be needed for some Maxtor disks which fail to comply with the ATA Specifications and don't properly indicate support for error- or self-test logging. [Please see the smartctl -T command-line option.]

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. Note that SMART Automatic Offline Testing is not part of the ATA Specification. Please see the smartctl -o command-line option documentation for further information about this feature.

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

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 loglevel \'LOG_CRITICAL\' will be logged to syslog. [Please see the smartctl -H command-line option.]

Reports increases in the number of errors in one of the two SMART logs. The valid arguments to this Directive are: error - report if the number of ATA errors reported in the ATA Error Log has increased since the last check. selftest - report if the number of failed tests reported in the SMART Self-Test Log has increased since the last check, or if the timestamp associated with the most recent failed test has increased. Note that such errors will only be logged if you run self-tests on the disk (and it fails a test!). Self-Tests can be run automatically by smartd: please see the \'-s\' Directive below. Self-Tests can also be run manually 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 and -t command-line options.]

Run Self-Tests or Offline Immediate Tests, at scheduled times. A Self- or Offline Immediate Test will be run at the end of periodic device polling, if all 12 characters of the string T/MM/DD/d/HH match the extended regular expression REGEXP. Here:

Some examples follow. In reading these, keep in mind that in extended regular expressions a dot \'.\' matches any single character, and a parenthetical expression such as \'(A|B|C)\' denotes any one of the three possibilities A, B, or C. To schedule a short Self-Test between 2-3am every morning, use:

 -s S/../.././02

To schedule a long Self-Test between 4-5am every Sunday morning, use:

 -s L/../../7/04

To schedule a long Self-Test between 10-11pm on the first and fifteenth day of each month, use:

 -s L/../(01|15)/./22

To schedule an Offline Immediate test after every midnight, 6am, noon,and 6pm, plus a Short Self-Test daily at 1-2am and a Long Self-Test every Saturday at 3-4am, use:

 -s (O/../.././(00|06|12|18)|S/../.././01|L/../../6/03)

Scheduled tests are run immediately following the regularly-scheduled device polling, if the current local date, time, and test type, match REGEXP. By default the regularly-scheduled device polling occurs every thirty minutes after starting smartd. Take caution if you use the \'-i\' option to make this polling interval more than sixty minutes: the poll times may fail to coincide with any of the testing times that you have specified with REGEXP, and so the self tests may not take place as you wish. Before running an offline or self-test, smartd checks to be sure that a self-test is not already running. If a self-test is already running, then this running self test will not be interrupted to begin another test. smartd will not attempt to run any type of test if another test was already started or run in the same hour. Each time a test is run, smartd will log an entry to SYSLOG. You can use these or the '-q showtests' command-line option to verify that you constructed REGEXP correctly. The matching order (L before S before C before O) ensures that if multiple test types are all scheduled for the same hour, the longer test type has precedence. This is usually the desired behavior. Unix users: please beware that the rules for extended regular expressions [regex(7)] are not the same as the rules for file-name pattern matching by the shell [glob(7)]. smartd will issue harmless informational warning messages if it detects characters in REGEXP that appear to indicate that you have made this mistake.

Send a warning email to the email address ADD if the \'-H\', \'-l\', \'-f\', \'-C\', or \'-O\' Directives detect a failure or a new error, or if a SMART command to the disk fails. 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 alert types, \'-H\', \'-l\', \'-f\', \'-C\', or \'-O\' 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 "comma separated" 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 by default under Solaris, in the previous paragraph, \'mailx\' and \'/bin/mailx\' are used, since Solaris \'/bin/mail\' does not accept a \'-s\' (Subject) command-line argument. On Windows, the \'Blat\' mailer (http://blat.sourceforge.net/) is used by default. This mailer uses a different command line syntax, see \'-M exec\' below. Note also 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. If the mailer or the shell running it produces any STDERR/STDOUT output, then a snippet of that output will be copied to SYSLOG. The remainder of the output is discarded. If problems are encountered in sending mail, this should help you to understand and fix them. If you have mail problems, we recommend running smartd in debug mode with the \'-d\' flag, using the \'-M test\' Directive described below. The following extension is available on Windows: By specifying \'msgbox\' as a mail address, a warning "email" is displayed as a message box on the screen. Using both \'msgbox\' and regular mail addresses is possible, if \'msgbox\' is the first word in the comma separated list. With \'sysmsgbox\', a system modal (always on top) message box is used. If running as a service, a service notification message box (always shown on current visible desktop) is used.

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 more than one of the following three -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 (one of the following three): 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. In addition, one may add zero or more of the following Directives: test - send a single test email immediately upon smartd startup. This allows one to verify that email is delivered correctly. Note that if this Directive is used, smartd will also send the normal email warnings that were enabled with the \'-m\' Directive, in addition to the single test email! 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/examplescripts/. The return status of the executable is recorded by smartd in SYSLOG. The executable is not expected to write to STDOUT or STDERR. If it does, then this is interpreted as indicating that something is going wrong with your executable, and a fragment of this output is logged to SYSLOG to help you to understand the problem. Normally, if you wish to leave some record behind, the executable should 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:

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 popen(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

Note that on Windows, the syntax of the \'Blat\' mailer is used:

- -q -subject "$SMARTD_SUBJECT" -to "$SMARTD_ADDRESS"

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

If the executable produces any STDERR/STDOUT output, then smartd assumes that something is going wrong, and a snippet of that output will be copied to SYSLOG. The remainder of the output is then discarded. 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/examplescripts/.

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.]

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.]

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

Equivalent to turning on the two previous flags \'-p\' and \'-u\'. Tracks changes in all device Attributes (both Prefailure and Usage). [Please see the smartctl -A command-line option.]

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.

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\' tracking 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.

When tracking, report the Raw value of Attribute ID along with its (normally reported) Normalized value. ID must be a decimal integer in the range from 1 to 255. This Directive modifies the behavior of the \'-p\', \'-u\', and \'-t\' tracking Directives and has no effect without one of them. This Directive may be given multiple times. A common use of this Directive is to track the device Temperature (often ID=194 or 231).

When tracking, report whenever the Raw value of Attribute ID changes. (Normally smartd only tracks/reports changes of the Normalized 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\' tracking Directives and has no effect without one of them. This Directive may be given multiple times. If this Directive is given, it automatically implies the \'-r\' Directive for the same Attribute, so that the Raw value of the Attribute is reported. A common use of this Directive is to track the device Temperature (often ID=194 or 231). It is also useful for understanding how different types of system behavior affects the values of certain Attributes.

[ATA only] Report if the current number of pending sectors is non-zero. Here ID is the id number of the Attribute whose raw value is the Current Pending Sector count. The allowed range of ID is 0 to 255 inclusive. To turn off this reporting, use ID = 0. If the -C ID option is not given, then it defaults to -C 197 (since Attribute 197 is generally used to monitor pending sectors). A pending sector is a disk sector (containing 512 bytes of your data) which the device would like to mark as ``bad" and reallocate. Typically this is because your computer tried to read that sector, and the read failed because the data on it has been corrupted and has inconsistent Error Checking and Correction (ECC) codes. This is important to know, because it means that there is some unreadable data on the disk. The problem of figuring out what file this data belongs to is operating system and file system specific. You can typically force the sector to reallocate by writing to it (translation: make the device substitute a spare good sector for the bad one) but at the price of losing the 512 bytes of data stored there.

[ATA only] Report if the number of offline uncorrectable sectors is non-zero. Here ID is the id number of the Attribute whose raw value is the Offline Uncorrectable Sector count. The allowed range of ID is 0 to 255 inclusive. To turn off this reporting, use ID = 0. If the -U ID option is not given, then it defaults to -U 198 (since Attribute 198 is generally used to monitor offline uncorrectable sectors). An offline uncorrectable sector is a disk sector which was not readable during an off-line scan or a self-test. This is important to know, because if you have data stored in this disk sector, and you need to read it, the read will fail. Please see the previous \'-C\' option for more details.

Report if the current temperature had changed by at least DIFF degrees since last report. Report or Warn if the temperature is greater or equal than one of INFO or CRIT degrees Celsius. If the limit CRIT is reached, a message with loglevel \'LOG_CRITICAL\' will be logged to syslog and a warning email will be send if '-m' is specified. If only the limit INFO is reached, a message with loglevel \'LOG_INFO\' will be logged. To disable any of the 3 reports, set the corresponding limit to 0. Trailing zero arguments may be omitted. By default, all temperature reports are disabled (\'-W 0\'). To track temperature changes of at least 2 degrees, use:

 -W 2

To log informal messages on temperatures of at least 40 degrees, use:

 -W 0,40

For warning messages/mails on temperatures of at least 45 degrees, use:

 -W 0,0,45

To combine all of the above reports, use:

 -W 2,40,45

For ATA devices, smartd interprets Attribute 194 as Temperature Celsius by default. This can be changed to Attribute 9 or 220 by the drive database or by the \'-v\' directive, see below.

[ATA only] Modifies the behavior of smartd to compensate for some known and understood device firmware bug. The arguments to this Directive are exclusive, so that only the final Directive given is used. The valid values are: none - Assume that the device firmware obeys the ATA specifications. This is the default, unless the device has presets for \'-F\' in the device database. samsung - In some Samsung disks (example: model SV4012H Firmware Version: RM100-08) some of the two- and four-byte quantities in the SMART data structures are byte-swapped (relative to the ATA specification). Enabling this option tells smartd to evaluate these quantities in byte-reversed order. Some signs that your disk needs this option are (1) no self-test log printed, even though you have run self-tests; (2) very large numbers of ATA errors reported in the ATA error log; (3) strange and impossible values for the ATA error log timestamps. samsung2 - In more recent Samsung disks (firmware revisions ending in "-23") the number of ATA errors reported is byte swapped. Enabling this option tells smartd to evaluate this quantity in byte-reversed order. Note that an explicit \'-F\' Directive will over-ride any preset values for \'-F\' (see the \'-P\' option below). [Please see the smartctl -F command-line option.]

Modifies the labeling for Attribute N, for disks which use non-standard Attribute definitions. This is useful in connection with the Attribute tracking/reporting Directives. This Directive may appear multiple times. Valid arguments to this Directive are: 9,minutes - Raw Attribute number 9 is power-on time in minutes. Its raw value will be displayed in the form \'Xh+Ym\'. Here X is hours, and Y is minutes in the range 0-59 inclusive. Y is always printed with two digits, for example \'06\' or \'31\' or \'00\'. 9,seconds - Raw Attribute number 9 is power-on time in seconds. Its raw value will be displayed in the form \'Xh+Ym+Zs\'. Here X is hours, Y is minutes in the range 0-59 inclusive, and Z is seconds in the range 0-59 inclusive. Y and Z are always printed with two digits, for example \'06\' or \'31\' or \'00\'. 9,halfminutes - Raw Attribute number 9 is power-on time, measured in units of 30 seconds. This format is used by some Samsung disks. Its raw value will be displayed in the form \'Xh+Ym\'. Here X is hours, and Y is minutes in the range 0-59 inclusive. Y is always printed with two digits, for example \'06\' or \'31\' or \'00\'. 9,temp - Raw Attribute number 9 is the disk temperature in Celsius. 192,emergencyretractcyclect - Raw Attribute number 192 is the Emergency Retract Cycle Count. 193,loadunload - Raw Attribute number 193 contains two values. The first is the number of load cycles. The second is the number of unload cycles. The difference between these two values is the number of times that the drive was unexpectedly powered off (also called an emergency unload). As a rule of thumb, the mechanical stress created by one emergency unload is equivalent to that created by one hundred normal unloads. 194,10xCelsius - Raw Attribute number 194 is ten times the disk temperature in Celsius. This is used by some Samsung disks (example: model SV1204H with RK100-13 firmware). 194,unknown - Raw Attribute number 194 is NOT the disk temperature, and its interpretation is unknown. This is primarily useful for the -P (presets) Directive. 198,offlinescanuncsectorct - Raw Attribute number 198 is the Offline Scan UNC Sector Count. 200,writeerrorcount - Raw Attribute number 200 is the Write Error Count. 201,detectedtacount - Raw Attribute number 201 is the Detected TA Count. 220,temp - Raw Attribute number 220 is the disk temperature in Celsius. Note: a table of hard drive models, listing which Attribute corresponds to temperature, can be found at: http://www.guzu.net/linux/hddtemp.db N,raw8 - Print the Raw value of Attribute N as six 8-bit unsigned base-10 integers. This may be useful for decoding the meaning of the Raw value. The form \'N,raw8\' prints Raw values for ALL Attributes in this form. The form (for example) \'123,raw8\' only prints the Raw value for Attribute 123 in this form. N,raw16 - Print the Raw value of Attribute N as three 16-bit unsigned base-10 integers. This may be useful for decoding the meaning of the Raw value. The form \'N,raw16\' prints Raw values for ALL Attributes in this form. The form (for example) \'123,raw16\' only prints the Raw value for Attribute 123 in this form. N,raw48 - Print the Raw value of Attribute N as a 48-bit unsigned base-10 integer. This may be useful for decoding the meaning of the Raw value. The form \'N,raw48\' prints Raw values for ALL Attributes in this form. The form (for example) \'123,raw48\' only prints the Raw value for Attribute 123 in this form.

Specifies whether smartd should use any preset options that are available for this drive. The valid arguments to this Directive are: use - use any presets that are available for this drive. This is the default. ignore - do not use any presets for this drive. show - show the presets listed for this drive in the database. showall - show the presets that are available for all drives and then exit. [Please see the smartctl -P command-line option.]

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, \'-l error\' to report increases in the number of ATA errors, \'-C 197\' to report nonzero values of the current pending sector count, and \'-U 198\' to report nonzero values of the offline pending sector count. 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 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@example.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@example.com

will do the same, but restricts the scan to ATA devices only.

DEVICESCAN -H -d ata -m root@example.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).

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 -d $SMART_DEVICETYPE $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: \' "$SMARTD_DEVICESTRING"
wall \'Warning message from smartd is: \' "$SMARTD_MESSAGE"
wall \'Shutting down machine in 30 seconds... \'
 
# Wait half a minute
sleep 30
 
# Power down the machine
/sbin/shutdown -hf now

Some example scripts are distributed with the smartmontools package, in /usr/share/doc/smartmontools/examplescripts/. Please note that these scripts typically run as root, so any files that they read/write should not be writable by ordinary users or reside in directories like /tmp that are writable by ordinary users and may expose your system to symlink attacks. As previously described, if the scripts write to STDOUT or STDERR, this is interpreted as indicating that there was an internal error within the script, and a snippet of STDOUT/STDERR is logged to SYSLOG. The remainder is flushed.

Daemon startup successful, or smartd was killed by a SIGTERM (or in debug mode, a SIGQUIT).

Commandline did not parse.

There was a syntax error in the config file.

Forking the daemon failed.

Couldn\'t create PID file.

Config file does not exist (only returned in conjunction with the \'-c\' option).

Config file exists, but cannot be read.

smartd ran out of memory during startup.

A compile time constant of smartd was too small. This can be caused by an excessive number of disks, or by lines in /etc/smartd.conf that are too long. Please report this problem to smartmontools-support@lists.sourceforge.net.

An inconsistency was found in smartd\'s internal data structures. This should never happen. It must be due to either a coding or compiler bug. Please report such failures to smartmontools-support@lists.sourceforge.net.

A device explicitly listed in /etc/smartd.conf can\'t be monitored.

smartd didn\'t find any devices to monitor.

When in daemon mode, smartd received a SIGINT or SIGQUIT. (Note that in debug mode, SIGINT has the same effect as SIGHUP, and makes smartd reload its configuration file. SIGQUIT has the same effect as SIGTERM and causes smartd to exit with zero exit status.

smartd was killed by a signal that is not explicitly listed above. The exit status is then 128 plus the signal number. For example if smartd is killed by SIGKILL (signal 9) then the exit status is 137.