HDD monitoring advice

[Jeff Boyce]

Greetings -

I am trying to learn about monitoring the scsi drives in my server.  I have 
a Dell PE 2600 running RHEL3 with 3 scsi drives in a Raid5 configuration, 
PERC 4/Di.  OMSA is installed and I use it to view other components of my 
system, but it does not provide detailed information about the health of the 
scsi drives.  I understand that smartctl should provide that information, 
but querying the drives with smartctl provides results indicating that it is 
disabled.

# smartctl -a /dev/sda
Device: MegaRAID LD0 RAID5 69360R Version: 2.48
Serial number:
Device type: disk
Local Time is: Fri Nov 11 08:12:08 2005 PST
scsiModePageOffset: bad resp_len=1 offset=4 bd_len=0
Device supports SMART and is Disabled
scsiModePageOffset: bad resp_len=1 offset=4 bd_len=0
Temperature Warning Disabled or Not Supported
Request Sense failed, [No such device]
No Error counter log to report
Warning: device does not support Self Test Logging

Following the information in the man page to enable SMART provides this 
result.

# smartctl -s on /dev/sda
scsiModePageOffset: bad resp_len=1 offset=4 bd_len=0
unable to enable Exception control and warning [Invalid argument]

What am I missing here?  Do I need to make a change in the bios, or is it 
something to do with the PERC?  My knowledge is a little limited in RAID and 
PERC, so can someone provide some guidance on how I should monitor the 
health / status of my drives?  Below lists some information from dmesg about 
my system.

$ dmesg | egrep -i -C1 '(scsi|raid|perc)'
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
--
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
scsi0 : Adaptec AIC7XXX EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 6.2.36
        <Adaptec 3960D Ultra160 SCSI adapter>
        aic7899: Ultra160 Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 32/253 SCBs

scsi1 : Adaptec AIC7XXX EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 6.2.36
        <Adaptec 3960D Ultra160 SCSI adapter>
        aic7899: Ultra160 Wide Channel B, SCSI Id=7, 32/253 SCBs
--
blk: queue f73efa18, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
(scsi0:A:6): 20.000MB/s transfers (10.000MHz, offset 15, 16bit)
  Vendor: BNCHMARK  Model: DLT1              Rev: 5538
  Type:   Sequential-Access                  ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Starting timer : 0 0
--
Starting timer : 0 0
megaraid: v1.18j (Release Date: Mon Jul  7 14:39:55 EDT 2003)
megaraid: found 0x1028:0x000e:idx 0:bus 8:slot 8:func 0
scsi2 : Found a MegaRAID controller at 0xf886f000, IRQ: 72
scsi2 : Enabling 64 bit support
megaraid: [2.48:1.06] detected 1 logical drives
megaraid: supports extended CDBs.
megaraid: channel[1] is raid.
megaraid: channel[2] is scsi.
scsi2 : LSI Logic MegaRAID 2.48 254 commands 15 targs 5 chans 7 luns
Starting timer : 0 0
scsi2: scanning virtual channel 0 for logical drives.
  Vendor: MegaRAID  Model: LD0 RAID5 69360R  Rev: 2.48
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Starting timer : 0 0
blk: queue f73f6e18, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
scsi2: scanning virtual channel 1 for logical drives.
scsi2: scanning virtual channel 2 for logical drives.
scsi2: scanning physical channel 0 for devices.
  Vendor: PE/PV     Model: 1x6 SCSI BP       Rev: 1.1
  Type:   Processor                          ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Starting timer : 0 0
blk: queue f73ef218, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
scsi2: scanning physical channel 1 for devices.
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi2, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
SCSI device sda: 142049280 512-byte hdwr sectors (72729 MB)
Partition check:
--
st: Version 20030406, bufsize 32768, max init. bufs 4, s/g segs 16
Attached scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 6, lun 0
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
--
lp0: console ready
Attached scsi generic sg2 at scsi2, channel 4, id 6, lun 0,  type 3
cdrom: This disc doesn't have any tracks I recognize!


Jeff Boyce
www.meridianenv.com