smartctl / mpt on 9.0-RC1

Jeremy Chadwick freebsd at jdc.parodius.com
Mon Nov 7 13:06:15 UTC 2011


On Mon, Nov 07, 2011 at 04:53:36PM +0400, Marat N.Afanasyev wrote:
> >>btw, 3dm can tell about reallocated sector count on sas somehow,
> >>while smartctl cannot, even on supported controller :(
> >
> >I think this is getting into a separate discussion topic.
> >
> >I realise we're discussing SAS, but what's shown above looks pure and
> >total SCSI output from smartmontools.  I'm very familiar with it (we
> >predominantly used SCSI disks at my workplace up until ~1 year ago).
> >
> 
> I will be satisfied with scsi-like output of smartctl for my sas
> drive on twa controller ;)

Did you actually look at the output I provided?  It's more or less the
same, minus data which you want that isn't being shown (at all).  That
includes things like drive manufacturing date, etc..

The problem could be in one of the following layers:

1. smartmontools itself
2. CAM translation layer (e.g. pass(4) or related bits)
3. twa(4) driver
4. 3Ware controller firmware

It is possible to determine if #1 and #2 are responsible by enabling
CAMDEBUG and/or using "camcontrol debug" to watch all CDBs which are
submit to the controller.  I'm not sure which one is responsible for
obtaining defect counts and so on -- I would need to review SAS and/or
SCSI specifications.  The information should be available per
T10's SCSI and SAS specification documents.

An alternate way to check would be to boot into a Linux LiveCD and
install smartmontools (in RAM) and see if it provides the data.

My point: don't be so quick to assume smartmontools is responsible when
there are 4 (maybe even 5) "layers" to how SCSI I/O makes it to the
actual drive.  This is one of the many reasons I try to avoid hardware
RAID controllers -- too much crap between me and the device I wish to
speak to.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                   Mountain View, CA, US |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.               PGP 4BD6C0CB |



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