smart-notifier doesn't display the faulty disk device when warning about disk health status

[WaltSullivan]

I have four disks attached to my system (Ububntu 16.04.1 LTS). smartmontools showed me a popup (attached). The popup says "The hard disk health status has changed...".

Which hard disk?

This popup has only 1 bit of information (I should worry about one or more disks). It should have more information (which disk, old status/new status, ...)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: smartmontools 6.4+svn4214-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-53.74-generic 4.4.30
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-53-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Sat Dec 10 10:04:45 2016
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-01-23 (1416 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
SourcePackage: smartmontools
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Eric Desrochers (slashd)]

I agree that displaying the faulty disk may be a good feature since the warning message doesn't say much about which disk amongst the 4 is the faulty one.

Extra steps are needed in order to identify the faulty disk.

The warning :

"The hard disk health status has changed. This could mean that hard drive failure is imminent. It is always a good idea to have up to date backups"

is generated by "smart-notifier" src code.

I think this falls under "Wishlist" as this is according to me a missing functionality.

[William Ricker (bill-n1vux)]

Please add to wishlist not only which drive, but what the status changed from and to.

I recently added a WD USB3 outboard drive, and apparently it changing from no SMART status to PASSED got me this scary and imprecise warning when SMART next ran -- as the only other drive is an M.2 SSD without SMART enabled.