[Techtalk] smartmontools

[Wim De Smet]

Hey,

bouncing this response back to the list.

On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 8:28 AM, Vid Ayer <svaksha at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
>  On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 1:09 PM, Wim De Smet <kromagg at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >  First off are you running debian?
>
>  no, i use ubuntu 7.10 as i dont have the bandwidth to download 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.
>
>  Ubuntu does not have that as default so it was downloaded using :
>
>  $  sudo apt-get install hdparm smartmontools
>  $  sudo apt-get update
>  $  tar zxvf smartmontools-5.38.tar.gz

Actually ubuntu has the package but you're doing things in the wrong
order as far as I can tell. I assume the first apt-get install failed?
Normally you do an update (to update the list of current packages)
first, then install. Trying this again should work since both packages
are in ubuntu. If all else fails, here's a link to the package:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/gutsy/smartmontools
http://packages.ubuntu.com/gutsy/hdparm
(you can install them with sudo dpkg -i <package.deb>)

If you just unpacked the source distribution
(smartmontools-5.38.tar.gz) with that last line you'd still have to
compile that yourself but it's a lot easier just working with the
packages directly.

>  >  "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.
>
>  currently i use 'sudo su' and
>
>  root at ta:/home/v# hdparm -B254 /dev/sda
>
>  ...execute hdparm as a root, which i find annoying for each bootup.

Once the proper package is installed for hdparm you'll get a
/etc/hdparm.conf where you can set these things quite easily.

>  >  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.
>
>  .... you are right, /etc/init.d/ does not have the start-up script.
>  What next ? - to get the daemon working during bootup.
>
>  thanks for the explanation :)

Try to get the packages installed, should be a breeze from there. :)

greets,
Wim