"smartd dead but subsys locked"

[Rick Stevens]

Gregory E. Garland wrote:
> 
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: redhat-install-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:redhat-install-list->
>>bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Rick Stevens
>>Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2005 12:56 PM
>>To: Getting started with Red Hat Linux
>>Subject: Re: "smartd dead but subsys locked"
>>
>>Gregory E. Garland wrote:
>>
>>>Hello,
>>>
>>>After putting in a new disk and re-installing RHEL4 ES, I get a "failed"
>>>message when booting and it is attempting to start the smartd service. I
>>>get the message "smartd dead but subsys locked" when checking the 
>>>status in the service configuration tool. Other than the new disk, the
>>>only difference from the previous installation is that there is now an
>>>external drive used to back up the Windows XP installation connecting
>>>through a usb port. Any ideas on what the problem is?
>>
>>Not all drives are SMART-compatible.  Check the ouput from "dmesg" and
>>the contents of "/var/log/messages" to see what's going on.
>>
>>To unlock it, delete the "/var/lock/subsys/smartd" file.  I'd then try
>>to run it in debug mode using "smartd -d" and see what it's doing.  If
>>it runs OK, then use "CTRL-C" to get out of it and run it normally by
>>using the command "smartd".  You can then check your disk by running
>>"smartctl -i /dev/hda".
> 
> 
> Thanks. The error was "unable to register device /dev/sda on line 3 of
> /etc/smartd.conf", which smartctl says is the external hard drive (and not
> smart-capable). I guess it did not appear before because I added the
> external drive after the original RHEL installation, and the smartd.conf
> file is generated during installation. Commenting out the line in the
> configuration file solves the problem.

Ah, good.  As I said, SMART is nice, but not critical.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-     Never put off 'til tommorrow what you can forget altogether!   -
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