[Techtalk] smartmontools

[Wim De Smet]

Hi,

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 4:36 AM, Vid Ayer <svaksha at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
>  On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 4:29 PM, Wim De Smet <kromagg at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >
>  >  That does not sound right. Probably it's just a configuration issue.
>
>  if it helps, ...  installed g++, did apt-get and installed
>  smartmontools, unpacked and configured it.

First off are you running debian? Did you install the package from
debian (smartmontools package) or did you compile it yourself? Some of
the following depends on that, see below.

>  >  I'm not sure how the package is set up but have a look at
>  >  /etc/default/ to see if there's any smartmontools settings file. It
>
>  its not in /etc/default

I'm using the debian sid packages which do include a
/etc/default/smartmontools file. Basically it just controls whether
"smartd" (a daemon packaged with smartmontools) is started at bootup.
The daemon itself is configured via /etc/smartd.conf. Depending on
what package you're using or you compiled it yourself all these files
might not exist.

If you compiled the package yourself there might not be a start-up
script in /etc/init.d/ to start the daemon and if there is you might
have to configure your init to run that script on bootup. If you get
back to me about the details concerning your distro and package
perhaps we can figure out how to do that.

>  >  could also be a simple problem with needing to set it up in the normal
>  >  config file in /etc/.
>
>  /etc has the hdparm.conf file
>  but i wonder why it needs to be executed manually? shouldnt it work as a daemon?

hdparm is not in smartmontools. It's a program that enables dma and
stuff on your hdd. You want /etc/smartd.conf if it exists.

>  >  I'm not sure what you mean here. Windows vista has its own smart
>  >  monitoring capability. smartmontools are basically a bunch of programs
>  >  that read out information available from your hard drive. If smart is
>  >  enabled on the drive in the bios, windows will probably read this
>  >  information too.
>
>  ... I assumed grub had more power that it actually does, my bad :)

If only. :-)

greets,
Wim