SMART Status and Disk Spin Down

I know these are coming somewhere in the future. @suman_chakravartula Do you know what the timeline is for these two features? Until SMART notifications are available for failing drives I’m unable to really use Rockstor the way I would like.

I checked the next milestone in the bug tracker and didn’t see anything relevant. Did I overlook it, or is this going to be in another milestone further out?

Thanks,
Learning2NAS

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a proper smart preconfiguration and notification would be great, and crucial for a “NAS” system.
I agree

@Learning2NAS Although it is still tucked away inside “Configure S.M.A.R.T Deamon” via Storage - Disks - S.M.A.R.T button there does exist the capability to schedule tests and configure and receive smart notifications as long as you have also configured the email notifications feature. Smartmontools is used and it has the ability to email results / alerts built in.

Also note that this same configuration screen is accessible via System - Services - Smart (spanner). Make sure that the S.M.A.R.T service is enabled for these settings to take place.

An example configuration is available in an older forum thread “Features I would like in RockStor” on post number 10.

@herbert Yes “proper” / sane default pre configuration would definitely be nice here along with a dedicated gui for this purpose.

+1 for preconfigured disk stuff

Is there a way to get notifications for SMART changes without running a test? I don’t want to do a short SMART test every day when the disk already updates its SMART attributes daily, anyway.

I’d like to see something like this:
-daily polling of the SMART status from the disk, no platter operation required.
-weekly or monthly scheduled short/long self tests at whatever interval the user wants.
-current disk status displayed in the GUI (spun up/down, temp, etc) along with any warnings/notifications about important events (reallocated sector count, for example).

I know the second feature is available already, but what about the other two?

The best implementation I’ve ever seen of this anywhere is in unRAID. If you’re looking for something to look at to generate ideas, test the free version of that software for a day. That doesn’t even compete with Rockstor in the features that matter most to me, but boy does it have a beautiful and informative array information page.

Also, what about spin down? I’m not running the most current version of Rockstor. Is this feature available in the GUI yet?

If not, can I configure spin down from the CLI?

“hdparm -S240 /dev/sdX”

At the CLI tells device X to spin down after 20 minutes.

The time is a multiplication of 240 x 5 = 1200 seconds = 20 minutes.

There is an explanation here:

I think hdparm is part of the standard Rockstor package.

Will have to be set for every drive after each reboot, which can be dificult to automatize as drives have a tendency to change letters upon reboot.

I do it manually after each reboot, which thankfully is relatively seldom for my system.

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@KarstenV Yes hdparm is now included / installed by default as is nano to ease the manual editing still needed for this one. There is also an existing issue open on GitHub “drive power down interface” where @maxhq, a recent code contributor, has added a rather fancy script that he uses and that may well serve in the mean time and some great ideas on this one as well. I particularly like the Per-pool power down idea he suggested.

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So, am I to understand that there is a long-term plan to create a GUI drive spin-down feature that will allow for persistent settings, but it has not been implemented?

@Learning2NAS Yes that pretty much sums it up. The disk power down feature request has come up a number of times hence opening the issue to collect together ideas on how it might be implemented and to keep track of progress in that area. Anyone wishing to contribute by way of implementation aspects or ideas can then do so against that issue.

I really like the way disk spindown and system power down is setup on my Netgear Readynas 104.

You simply have a graphical representation of the week, with each day divided into small squares (could be 48 for ½ hour precission). Then you simply click the squares representing the times of the day you want the system to be powered on.

The same can be done with disk spin down. You can set it as a general feature, and even tell the system specific times of the day, where it should not spin down the disks, the same way you choose system power down.

Its very easy and intuitive to use and setup.

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n00b -
I log into Rockstor, execute the hdparm command as above and recieve “permission denied.”

Presume I need root access to run hdparm? If so, how do I log in as root?

Sorry for the delay in updating this post, I had made a note in the related issue to do so but have thus far not done so, oh well here it is:

I just wanted to note here that the previously referenced issue open on GitHub “drive power down interface” has now been closed as of Rockstor version 3.8-13.06 (testing channel updates) as we now have a WebUI interface to set drive power down via an hour glass icon for each disk within the Disks page. This feature should, if all goes well, end up in the next stable release also.

@William212 Hopefully this should server your requirements and just for completeness to login as root via ssh you simply have to specify the user root ie

ssh root@rockstor-ip

And yes root privileges are required to run hdparm from the command line. Though hopefully it should now no longer be necessary to execute hdparm this way as that is exactly what the drive power down feature does ‘under the hood’. There is also now a drive power status readout and a column indicating the current APM setting for each drive along with an ability to adjust this setting if need be (rolled into the spin down idle time setting). Oh and a little pause button for each drive to request that the drive enter the standby state and consequently spin down.https://forum.rockstor.com/t/dev-log-for-3-8-14/1412/9?u=phillxnet

Thanks.

There are still open issue on “Custom Cron Jobs via WebGUI” and “Schedule power down/up of the system” both of which relate to automating shutdown and power on configuration capabilities.

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