No SMART Service with HP Microserver

[jebear]

Hi,

I set up my HP Microserver this evening with the latest Freenas 8.0.3 p1. I've got 8GB of RAM and put in 2 x 1TB NTFS formatted WD Green Drives. I just wanted to mount the volumes and and create shares with other Windows PCs on my network - which it did. What I can't manage is getting the SMART service to run. I've configured tests and checked that SMART is enabled on each drive. Unfortunately, when I try to start the service, Freenas says that it cannot start. I'm wondering if this is an issue with the RAID controller on the Microserver. I would be grateful for any pointers to get it to work.

Many thanks

Jebear

 

[jebear]

No Luck with BIOS / ROM Update

I thought that I would have a go at updating the BIOS to see if that would kick SMART into action. Flashed HP ProLiant MicroServer system ROM O41 (07/29/2011), but had no effect. Still getting "The service could not be started" when I try to start SMART. At the moment I am just playing with Freenas. Can't see me deploying it in any real world scenarios unless I can trust it. Still hoping it is an HP Proliant Microserver issue.

Jebear

 

[William Grzybowski]

BIOS has no effect over it...

Paste /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf

Are you using a RAID Hardware? If thats the case then its probably a bug, freenas smart does not work quite well if those cards yet...

 

[peterh]

you cannot use NTFS formatted disks ( they will be reformatted when you create your volumes either ufs or zfs)
Start with creating filesystems, then smart will most likley get running.

smartctl is included and from commandline :
smartctl -a /dev/ada0 ( or whatever your disks are named ) will show smart info.

If this is a hp microserver n36 it WILL work, don't know about the n40 ( others might tell us )

 

[jebear]

Thank you for your advice William and Peterh.

Here are the contents of the smartd.conf:

################################################
# smartd.conf generated by FreeNAS
################################################
/dev/ada1s1 -n standby -W 0,0,0
/dev/ada0s1 -n standby -W 0,0,0


I'm just using the standard onboard hardware for the HP N36L Microserver.

The command:

smartctl -a /dev/ada0

Worked a treat and returned all the smart data for the drive. I will follow your advice peterh over the next couple of days and create file systems on some new disks and see if that helps me to get the SMART service running.

Many thanks

 

[William Grzybowski]

That specific issue is only going to be fixed in 8.2

 

[peterh]

what specific issue will be fixed ?

I have been running smart(d) in freenas ( and freebsd ) with no particular problem.

 

[jebear]

Thanks for your contributions. I look forward to 8.2. I think that freenas 8 has a lot of promise.

I like the functionality about scheduling SMART tests, but what would be really useful is the ability to see the current SMART status of all drives within the GUI. Maybe even with a link to your test scores against each drive.

Many thanks

 

[peterh]

did you define any smart tests under system => smart tests?
i created a "short selftest" one per hour per disk
I dint thin smartd will run unless at least one disc has some smart tests defined

 

[jebear]

Unfortunately, that didn't work.
I defined a test on one of the drives but I still get "The SMART service could not be started" when I try to start it.

 

[Visseroth]

I'm having the same issues and for some reason my smart service will not start.
I also agree that there NEEDS to be a way to view SMART results in the gui and there also NEEDS to be a way to view system logs so that we as users and admins don't have to go digging through the system for the logs just so we can see what the heck is going on.

 

[peterh]

I see a problem :
The config shown :
Here are the contents of the smartd.conf:

################################################
# smartd.conf generated by FreeNAS
################################################
/dev/ada1s1 -n standby -W 0,0,0
/dev/ada0s1 -n standby -W 0,0,0

refers to slices ( partitions) Smartd works on disk drives .

Here is part of my config
################################################
# smartd.conf generated by FreeNAS
################################################
/dev/ada0 -n sleep -W 3,30,36 -m peter@hk*** -s S/(01|02|03|04|05|06|07|08|09|10|11|12)/../(1|2|3|4|5|6|7)/..

I have deliberatly turned off swap to data disks ( as discussed in another thread) Maybe that's the difference

 

[William Grzybowski]

The issue is that he imported the volumes and the disk tables are using slices instead of disk name...

This is the problem that is only going to be fixed in 8.2...

 

[peterh]

Well, using swap on zfs disk volumes is - to be polite - silly.

I do remember curitiba however with a very nice x-mas show ( angels in the sky etc) I'd like to visit again some time.

 

[Visseroth]

I have swap turned on sat at 2 gig. But I will check my configfile soon as I have a chance

 

[peterh]

It does not help you as the current discs already has a partition set aside for swap. You need to
first set swap == 0 inte config, then scratch and recreate your pool.
Alternativly edit the smart config and replace the ada0s1 with "ada0" ( use disk names instead of partitions.)
Try to save this into the stored config, and as long as you don't change smartconfig i think it will stay.

Real swap is done on dedicated discs far far away from zfs disks