Michael Hennebry wrote:
Though quiet at the moment, my desktop sometimes sometimes makes a noise that I attribute to either a disk or a fan on its last legs. I'm looking for suggestions for distinguishing.
For the disk, I expect I should use either hdparm of fsck. Even after reading the man page, I'm not sure how I would use hdparm. If I use fsck, what should I take as evidence of a bad drive? A good drive?
1. Have you looked at either /var/log/messages or dmesg for errors? 2. You can also use SMART: step 1: smartctl -t short /dev/sd[abc...] (one at a time) step 2, after 2+ minutes so the test's done: smartctl -a | more 3. The long way would be fsck -c (check for badblocks).
Is there a way to tell whether the OS thinks a fan is on? Is there a way to turn a fan on or off manually?
Depends on your m/b. If you've got a BMC, install OpenIPMI and ipmitool.
Time for a backup.
Indeed. *AFTER* you do that, you could take the system down, open it up, and vacuum it - don't forget the fans, heatsinks, and PSU.
mark