Catastrophic disk failure, where was smartd?

[Tom Horsley]

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:35:49 -0500
"David G. Mackay" <mackay_d at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> Shouldn't there have been some indication of problems prior to the
> failure?

I have a feeling smartd is quite a lot like the emergency lights
we have at work. They come on fine when you press the "test" button,
but if the power actually goes out, they don't work at all :-).

Most UPS boxes seem to be about the same. They'll be reporting
self test OK and lots of battery life, then the power actually
fails, and they fall over dead.