gsmartcontrol crashes on startup or manual scan

[Charles Hemingway]

gsmartcontrol now has issues scanning SCSI or Firewire devices. When an external FireWire drive is attached to a computer, gsmartcontrol can only be started with:
sudo gsmartcontrol --no-scan
But, when Ctrl-R is pressed for a manual scan, program exits with error:

me@mylaptop:~$ sudo gsmartcontrol --no-scan
After Ctrl-R
(gsmartcontrol:18701): IBUS-WARNING **: The owner of /home/me/.config/ibus/bus is not root!
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Rotation Rate"
<warn> [hz] Warning: exit: Device open failed, or device did not return an IDENTIFY DEVICE structure.
<warn> [app] execute_smartctl(): Error while executing smartctl binary.
<warn> [app] StorageDevice::execute_device_smartctl(): Error while executing smartctl binary.
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Vendor"
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Product"
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Logical block size"
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Logical Unit id"
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Device type"
<error> [gtk]
<error> [gtk] unhandled exception (type std::exception) in signal handler:
<error> [gtk] what: basic_string::substr
<error> [gtk]

On start, it exits with no error:
me@mylaptop:~$ sudo gsmartcontrol
(gsmartcontrol:18672): IBUS-WARNING **: The owner of /home/me/.config/ibus/bus is not root!
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Rotation Rate"
<warn> [hz] Warning: exit: Device open failed, or device did not return an IDENTIFY DEVICE structure.
<warn> [app] execute_smartctl(): Error while executing smartctl binary.
<warn> [app] StorageDevice::execute_device_smartctl(): Error while executing smartctl binary.
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Vendor"
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Product"
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Logical block size"
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Logical Unit id"
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Device type"
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::out_of_range'
  what(): basic_string::substr

1) Version of Ubuntu:
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty

2) Package Version:
Architecture: amd64
Version: 0.8.7-1

3) GsmartControl to start normal

4) GsmartControl will crash (see above)

Potentially related info: According to Debian devs, this is fixed in Version 0.8.7-1.1
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=722989

Updated packages available here:
http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/gsmartcontrol/

Laptop Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GHz
Intel 945GM chipset
3 GB of RAM
FireWire (IEEE 1394): Recoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 controller

SATA Dock:
NewerTech Voyager Q (FireWire 400/800, eSATA, and USB 2.0

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Rod Smith (rodsmith)]

I see something similar, but in my case it's an external USB drive that's causing the problem; if I unplug the external disk, gsmartcontrol launches normally. My output is slightly different from what's reported earlier, so I'm presenting it here:

$ sudo gsmartcontrol

(gsmartcontrol:7931): IBUS-WARNING **: The owner of /home/rodsmith/.config/ibus/bus is not root!
<warn> [hz] Warning: exit: Device open failed, or device did not return an IDENTIFY DEVICE structure.
<warn> [app] execute_smartctl(): Error while executing smartctl binary.
<warn> [app] StorageDevice::execute_device_smartctl(): Error while executing smartctl binary.
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Rotation Rate"
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Rotation Rate"
<warn> [hz] Warning: exit: Command line did not parse.
<warn> [app] execute_smartctl(): Error while executing smartctl binary.
<warn> [app] StorageDevice::execute_device_smartctl(): Error while executing smartctl binary.
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Vendor"
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Product"
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Logical block size"
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Logical Unit id"
<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Device type"
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::out_of_range'
  what(): basic_string::substr
$ echo $?
134

[JulioJu (juanes0890)]

Hi

If you have a bridge who support the vendor independent SAT standard try

`sudo gsmartcontrol --add-device '/dev/sdb::sat' --no-scan'

If your bridge support an other standard, you can change 'sat' with the correct one (see https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/USB and https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/Supported_USB-Devices).

Please tell me if is ok for you !

Thinks in advance