smartd spindown check fails on newer disks, disabling check. Disks then spin-up when polled for SMART data.
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
smartmontools (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Medium
|
Unassigned | ||
Xenial |
Won't Fix
|
Medium
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
Problem:
Support for additional power modes in modern disks like Seagate ST8000AS0002 causes reporting of some power states as "unknown". Where smartd checks disk while these additional states are active, it detects that the disk fails to comply with ATA standard and ceases to use the -n directive. From then on, smartd will check the disk regardless of current power mode, causing the disk to wake from idle every time smartd polls the disk state.
Symptoms:
* Initially, disks do not wake from standby as smartd detects that they are idle.
* At some point, smartd polls disk when in "unknown" power state. The following appears in /var/log/syslog:
"Device: <DISK>, CHECK POWER STATUS returned 130, not ATA compliant, ignoring -n Directive" OR
"Device: <DISK>, CHECK POWER STATUS returned 129, not ATA compliant, ignoring -n Directive"
* Following this, disk wakes from standby (spins up) every time smartd polls for SMART status.
What should have happened:
Support for more recent version of ATA spec for power modes is included in updated smartmontools. By updating, smartmontools will not detect more recent disks as not supporting ATA specification and as such, will not disable -n directive. As such, smartmontools will continue to check if disks are spun down before polling for SMART data.
--> As an aside, and more of an upstream issue, but a better check for smartmon to perform would be "is the disk in known sleep/standby power state" directly before waking it every time, rather than detecting if the disk is ever in an unknown power state and disabling the check. This has the advantage of not breaking the "do not wake from sleep to poll for SMART data" function if further power modes are added to the ATA spec in future revisions as long as no new sleep/standby modes are added...
Cause:
Current version of smartd is r4214. Support for ACS-2 disks not included.
See smartmontools ticket here: https:/
Patch included 27/3/16 in r4255 (smartd) and r4256 (smartctl). (About two weeks ago).
Ubuntu version:
Description: Ubuntu Xenial Xerus (development branch)
Release: 16.04
Smartmontools version:
smartmontools:
Installed: 6.4+svn4214-1
Candidate: 6.4+svn4214-1
Version table:
*** 6.4+svn4214-1 500
500 http://
100 /var/lib/
Fix is included in smartmontools-6.5 release.