What is smartd?

[Per Bjornsson]

On Wed, 2004-08-11 at 21:31, Clyde Kunkel wrote:

> Smartd is the linux process that monitors hard disk health when the drive
> supports S.M.A.R.T technology.  If smartd is failing, it may mean there is a
> problem with the drive, tho not a fatal one.  See if your bios gives you a
> warning msg during post and also run your stand alone disk diagnostics.

Eh... Just to provide some calming down, I bet that this failing isn't
nearly that serious. Most likely the first drive that smartd detects
doesn't support S.M.A.R.T. (it could e.g. be an optical drive); in that
case the startup script will give an error message. (If the drive is
actually broken I'm pretty sure that smartd still starts happily but
reports errors when it runs...)

Of course, if I misread the OP and it's not a failure to start in the
init scripts, indeed the drive is breaking down, in which case it's time
to scrape the bits off that drive and be happy that nothing worse
happened...

> Look at man smartd for good info.

Indeed, good advice.

Cheers,
Per


-- 
Per Bjornsson <perbj at stanford.edu>
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University