[smartmontools-support] Default smartd.conf behavior

Christian Franke

2017-03-13 19:59:41 UTC

Post by Preet
DEVICESCAN
With no directives explicitly specified. The docs say this means the
'-a' directive will be passed to all disks detected by DEVICESCAN.

Which is the same as '-H -f -t -l error -l selftest -l selfteststs -C
197 -U 198'. See smartd.conf man page.

Post by Preet
What are the default settings for offline testing? Will smartd perform
regular offline (immediate?) tests if "-o on" isn't specified? I'm
actually a bit confused as to what checks smartd performs if you don't
specify anything.

Smartd never starts any self-test unless '-s REGEXP' is specified.

Directive '-o on' sends the "SMART ENABLE AUTOMATIC OFF-LINE" ATA
command to the device and has no further effect. This command was only
specified in the original SMART Spec (see -o option on smartctl man page).

The effect (if any) is firmware specific.

Try '-l offlinests' directive in smartd.conf to track changes of the
offline data collection status.

Post by Preet
What are the default settings for attribute autosave? Will attribute
values be saved to NV memory if "-S on" isn't specified? I see
attribute values change even though I haven't explicitly specified
"-S" (but maybe that's because that flag just happens to be set on the
disk?)

In theory this is also firmware specific, in practice it is apparently
always enabled by default. I never needed to use '-S on'.

Regards,
Christian