Bruce I want to point out that I understood the behaviour of S.M.A.R.T. when running at the same time two kind of self-test. It's well explained on the man page and it depends on the hard disk capabilities:

"Suspend Offline collection upon new command."

...but for this reason I think it's not a nice idea to have 2 o more rows in crontab to query the hd attributes because we're unable to know when one self-test if finished...the risk is not having any result.

Thanks,

 Fabrizio

Even though there are things not explained because the only explaination can come from experiences... :o) I'm just afraid to use this useful tool because I always think to get some failure....an example would be running the long self test and the short one (this last is suggested to be run every 2 minutes as per Quantum Vendor), but what could happen if ever the short and long self-test were run together (?) (because I planned in cron the long one)

Well I know Bruce you're having some trouble with all these questions :o) (maybe you've never got a such massive e-mail from a smartmontools' user :o)))

:o) Ciao,

 Fabrizio

 Bruce Allen <ballen <at> gravity.phys.uwm.edu> wrote:

In addition to reading the smartmontools manual, you can download the ATA
specification from the web (a link is given on the smartmonools web page)
and read (or skim) the section of SMART. Being the specification itself,
this is in fact the "last word" on the subject.

Cheers,
Bruce

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Fabrizio Di Meo wrote:

>
> Thanks Bruce...I read and printed the manual page but I've to re-read
> them. (double and double check is a must to me) Maybe I've to "study"
> the SMART technology to know the meaning of some terms...just like the
> one I quoted previuosly (-S autosave...I don't really understand what
> means "Autosaving" and what saves in this case :o) ). Well however I
> wish to thank you for your patience and your excellent work. Fabrizio
> Bruce Allen wrote:> thank you for having replied in a such short time. Well I thought
> > smartd run some tests infact I coulnd't explain the existence of
> > smartctl except than reading attributes.
>
> It's also for running self-tests, and examining the self-test logs and ATA
> error logs.
>
> Although your main interest is in smartd, you should carefully read the
> smartctl manual page as well.
>
> > As you told I've to run
> > "smartctl -t long /dev/hda" by crontab...but what should be the most
> > right scheduling...I mean 4 hours or more?
>
> I'd suggest about once per week.
>
> > Doesn't this generate some
> > problems (conflicts) with the self test which is made by the hard
> > disk itself? (or the hard disk doesn't perform any kind of self
> > test?).
>
> Please read the smartctl manual page completely. It has a description of
> t he different types of testing.
>
> > and smartctl updates the
> > attributes
>
> smartctl does not update the attributes. As it says in the manual page:
> smartctl does not calculate any of these values, it merely reports them
> from the S.M.A.R.T. data on the disk.
>
> > 2. smartd will read the updated attributes and will notify
> > what changed is. Another question....(sorry :o) ) I can't understand
> > when I should use the directive -S:
> >
> >
> > -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.
> >
> >
> >
> > This is also a command line parameter we can find on using smartctl so
> > this seems I can use smartd instead of smartctl , but we have told that
> > these programs make different things...so I feel a little confused on
> > finding duplicated command line parameter/directive on both smartctl
> > and smartd.... :o( when using the one and the other?
>
> In fact you can use either smartctl or smartd to turn on the Attribute
> auto-save. It's there as a convenience in smartd.
>
> Cheers,
> Bruce
>
>
>
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