smart(8) Call for Testing

[Michael Dexter]

On 3/27/18 10:01 AM, Charles Sprickman via freebsd-fs wrote:
> Again, maybe I’m just missing something or maybe this is here for a particular vendor that needs it or something.

You are all welcome to watch the AsiaBSDCon and BSDCan talks on the 
rationale but here are a few:

1. Ability to use it in-base. Chuck has done the "hard part" and more 
can be built on top of it. With an in-base utility or library, the 
installer could check disk health before installation as could zpool(8) 
(proposed elsewhere with the optimal implementation TBD).

2. Scriptability as per my last post. Most administrators have 
relatively homogeneous selections of disks and seek four to five key 
SMART values.

3. Usability. You CAN obtain even raw-er values with a camcontrol 
inquiry but that truly is a pain and as I recall, they land in hex 
values, making scripting even more a pain.

For what it's worth, I believe smart(8) had NVMe support before 
smartmontools did.

smart(8) is not the work of a vendor but rather is based on my personal 
experience with hundreds of ZFS-based storage systems in the wild.

I made several public calls for input on the design prior to Chuck 
writing any code. May I kindly request that you rephraise your 
criticisms as feature requests?

Michael