SMART status is not supported in palimpsest for USB hard-drives

[Le Gluon Du Net]

Binary package hint: gnome-disk-utility

If I connect my hard drive with a USB connector, palimpsest reports SMART Status as "Not Supported". However, when using the smartctl command line utility, the correct SMART information is returned for the drive.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: gnome-disk-utility 2.32.1-0ubuntu4
Package: gnome-disk-utility 3.0.2-1ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-7.39-generic 2.6.38
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-12-generic 3.0.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-7-generic i686
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-12-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Mar 28 00:57:03 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20110302)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=fr:en
 LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-disk-utility
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue that you reported is one that should be reproducible with the live environment of the Desktop CD of the stable release - Oneiric Ocelot. It would help us greatly if you could test with it so we can work on getting it fixed. You can find out more about it at http://www.ubuntu.com/download . Thanks again and we appreciate your help.

[Le Gluon Du Net (legluondunet)]

this bug is still present in oneiric, only root could obtain smart info of an USB disk.

[Carey Underwood (cwillu)]

Confirmed; doesn't seem to be a simple matter of root privilege though, but rather some missing plumbing when the device is connected via USB.

[waspinator (patrickwasp)]

still doesn't work in Ubuntu 12.04. This feature would be useful as an early warning system for failing external backup drives.

[waspinator (patrickwasp)]

fixed in ubuntu 12.10

[Viktor Pal (deere)]

This is not even fixed in Ubuntu 15.10.

[Hans Deragon (deragon)]

You may follow Bug #1540110 which is the continuity of this bug, with the upstream bug link.

[Alroger Filho (alroger-cafe-ti)]

Wow, shouldn't be hard to fix this.