Hi all,
Does anyone know how to control a hard drive light from Linux? I'm building a 24bay Linux File server which will run software RAID and I need an easy way for the engineers to see which HDD has gone bad.
Most of our NAS devices has 2 lights on the hard drive cages and they automatically signal a bad one (reg light, light constant on , etc) but I can't figure out how todo this from Linux.
On 01/22/11 2:03 PM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
Hi all,
Does anyone know how to control a hard drive light from Linux? I'm building a 24bay Linux File server which will run software RAID and I need an easy way for the engineers to see which HDD has gone bad.
Most of our NAS devices has 2 lights on the hard drive cages and they automatically signal a bad one (reg light, light constant on , etc) but I can't figure out how todo this from Linux.
i can't answer your actual question, but generally those backplanes have a "SAF-TE" or "SES" chip on them which appears as a seperate SCSI/SAS device, and the system communicates with this to manage drive status includinng indicators. I have no idea how you get this working in Linux, however, but maybe this is sufficient clue to help find your answer
At Sat, 22 Jan 2011 14:48:59 -0800 CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org wrote:
On 01/22/11 2:03 PM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
Hi all,
Does anyone know how to control a hard drive light from Linux? I'm building a 24bay Linux File server which will run software RAID and I need an easy way for the engineers to see which HDD has gone bad.
Most of our NAS devices has 2 lights on the hard drive cages and they automatically signal a bad one (reg light, light constant on , etc) but I can't figure out how todo this from Linux.
i can't answer your actual question, but generally those backplanes have a "SAF-TE" or "SES" chip on them which appears as a seperate SCSI/SAS device, and the system communicates with this to manage drive status includinng indicators. I have no idea how you get this working in Linux, however, but maybe this is sufficient clue to help find your answer
I believe there is a package that understands how to talk to the SAF-TE device. It might be in epel or rpmforge.
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Rudi Ahlers Rudi@softdux.com wrote:
Hi all,
Does anyone know how to control a hard drive light from Linux? I'm building a 24bay Linux File server which will run software RAID and I need an easy way for the engineers to see which HDD has gone bad.
Most of our NAS devices has 2 lights on the hard drive cages and they automatically signal a bad one (reg light, light constant on , etc) but I can't figure out how todo this from Linux.
That's because they have hardware RAID, with that built in at the hardware itself, the drivers designed for that chassis, and the management tools for it. Unpeeling that to say "make it work on Linux!" would be unfair: we couldn't make a good guess without knowing the actual *hardware* of your Linux File Server. And we can't even guess what the available displays of your drive enclosure are.
Why are you doing this when a commercial solution with such featurs, equipped with 1 TB drives, costs less than $10,000 with all these goodies and the superior performance of hardware RAID thrown in?
On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 6:21 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia nkadel@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Rudi Ahlers Rudi@softdux.com wrote:
Hi all,
Does anyone know how to control a hard drive light from Linux? I'm building a 24bay Linux File server which will run software RAID and I need an easy way for the engineers to see which HDD has gone bad.
Most of our NAS devices has 2 lights on the hard drive cages and they automatically signal a bad one (reg light, light constant on , etc) but I can't figure out how todo this from Linux.
That's because they have hardware RAID, with that built in at the hardware itself, the drivers designed for that chassis, and the management tools for it. Unpeeling that to say "make it work on Linux!" would be unfair: we couldn't make a good guess without knowing the actual *hardware* of your Linux File Server. And we can't even guess what the available displays of your drive enclosure are.
Nope. Many NAS devices don't have hardware RAID, especially those which allow you to change the RAID level from a web interface. They also mostly run Linux, or BSD (very few run Windows. And many SAS expanders have 2 light for each drive: power & activity.
I need to know how to manipulate either of those, to make it appear differently from it's normal stats so that the on-site tech's know there's a drive fault.
Why are you doing this when a commercial solution with such featurs, equipped with 1 TB drives, costs less than $10,000 with all these goodies and the superior performance of hardware RAID thrown in?
Check again. Many of those solutions don't actually have hardware RAID in the price. We've been down this road already.
And, I'm tired of: 1. vendon lock-ins 2. vendor limitation cause they want to milk more out of you than necessary. 3. 40 -70% import duties on those devices in our country. 4. vendors who feel you should have storage the way they like it, not the way you like it. 5. vendor "expert technicians" who don't even know how to setup their own equipment properly.
On 01/23/2011 04:48 PM, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 6:21 AM, Nico Kadel-Garciankadel@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Rudi AhlersRudi@softdux.com wrote:
Hi all,
Does anyone know how to control a hard drive light from Linux? I'm building a 24bay Linux File server which will run software RAID and I need an easy way for the engineers to see which HDD has gone bad.
we use the following workaround:
- trigger the activity light by running "hdparm -tT /dev/sdX" for the drive in question - watch the lights of all the drives - the one that blinks is sdX; this of course works best if the array is idle
This is of course very low-tech, but it does the job.
HTH,
Kay
On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Rudi Ahlers Rudi@softdux.com wrote:
Hi all,
Does anyone know how to control a hard drive light from Linux? I'm building a 24bay Linux File server which will run software RAID and I need an easy way for the engineers to see which HDD has gone bad.
Most of our NAS devices has 2 lights on the hard drive cages and they automatically signal a bad one (reg light, light constant on , etc) but I can't figure out how todo this from Linux.
--
This page might help: http://pikawarp.org/?p=139
Talks about setting entries in /sys/class/leds.
On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 8:20 PM, Kwan Lowe kwan.lowe@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Rudi Ahlers Rudi@softdux.com wrote:
Hi all,
Does anyone know how to control a hard drive light from Linux? I'm building a 24bay Linux File server which will run software RAID and I need an easy way for the engineers to see which HDD has gone bad.
Most of our NAS devices has 2 lights on the hard drive cages and they automatically signal a bad one (reg light, light constant on , etc) but I can't figure out how todo this from Linux.
--
This page might help: http://pikawarp.org/?p=139
Talks about setting entries in /sys/class/leds.
That's exactly what I want todo, but with drive cage LED's. Most hot swap drive cages have 2 LED's, so I need a more universal approach, i.e. irrespective of whether it's SuperMicro, Intel, HP, etc.
The page you suggested is very specific to the WARP devices, and by the looks of it they have a script that runs in those folders, which in turn interacts with the drive's circuitry.
but, I have yet to find a solution for generic Linux.
On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Rudi Ahlers Rudi@softdux.com wrote:
This page might help: http://pikawarp.org/?p=139
Talks about setting entries in /sys/class/leds.
That's exactly what I want todo, but with drive cage LED's. Most hot swap drive cages have 2 LED's, so I need a more universal approach, i.e. irrespective of whether it's SuperMicro, Intel, HP, etc.
The page you suggested is very specific to the WARP devices, and by the looks of it they have a script that runs in those folders, which in turn interacts with the drive's circuitry.
but, I have yet to find a solution for generic Linux.
The actual process is similar on other devices.. If they have support it will show up in /sys/class/leds and you can enable them the same way.
On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 1:07 AM, Kwan Lowe kwan.lowe@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Rudi Ahlers Rudi@softdux.com wrote:
This page might help: http://pikawarp.org/?p=139
Talks about setting entries in /sys/class/leds.
That's exactly what I want todo, but with drive cage LED's. Most hot swap drive cages have 2 LED's, so I need a more universal approach, i.e. irrespective of whether it's SuperMicro, Intel, HP, etc.
The page you suggested is very specific to the WARP devices, and by the looks of it they have a script that runs in those folders, which in turn interacts with the drive's circuitry.
but, I have yet to find a solution for generic Linux.
The actual process is similar on other devices.. If they have support it will show up in /sys/class/leds and you can enable them the same way. _______________________________________________
Yes, I get that. But, those embeded devices already has the software / scripts / code / etc included to contol the LED's. I can't find anything in a standard Linux installation todo the same. So I was hoping someone knows what they actually use?
On Mon, 24 Jan 2011 01:13:38 +0200 Rudi Ahlers Rudi@SoftDux.com wrote:
Yes, I get that. But, those embeded devices already has the software / scripts / code / etc included to contol the LED's. I can't find anything in a standard Linux installation todo the same. So I was hoping someone knows what they actually use?
There's no real standard in hardware to play with leds. For example, you can play witch num/caps/scrol lock leds on your keyboard easily, but there's no such standard for cheap generic drive enclosures. Fancier ones use saf-te, as others already mentioned.
What you need to do is to figure out what your case and enclosures use to implement LEDs and if that is exposed to OS. Only then you can start asking how to control that from OS ...
On 01/23/11 3:24 PM, Jure Pečar wrote:
There's no real standard in hardware to play with leds. For example, you can play witch num/caps/scrol lock leds on your keyboard easily, but there's no such standard for cheap generic drive enclosures. Fancier ones use saf-te, as others already mentioned.
if this is an external SAS/SATA array, its highly likely it uses SES2, the successor to SAF-TE, or SGPIO (the successor to SES2) and again, SES2 usually appears as another 'scsi' device on the backplane, it should show up if you list all devices on the HBA. alternately, SES2 is accessed via SMbus i2c commands. SGPIO however, uses a special iPass connector and is only supported by specific HBAs that have the ipass interface which combines SAS and the SGPIO signals.
I believe there are packages for both SES (sg-ses) and sgpio, and if you setup this stuff and properly configure it to match your enclosure, dmraid/mdraid should automatically set the LEDs. the problem is, there's a lot to configure. for instance, if your HBA has in fact this sgpio support, there's no standards for how the host talks to that.
having never actually done this (we buy packaged storage from vendors who take care of this stuff for us), thats about all I can suggest.
On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 2:55 AM, John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
On 01/23/11 3:24 PM, Jure Pečar wrote:
There's no real standard in hardware to play with leds. For example, you can play witch num/caps/scrol lock leds on your keyboard easily, but there's no such standard for cheap generic drive enclosures. Fancier ones use saf-te, as others already mentioned.
if this is an external SAS/SATA array, its highly likely it uses SES2, the successor to SAF-TE, or SGPIO (the successor to SES2) and again, SES2 usually appears as another 'scsi' device on the backplane, it should show up if you list all devices on the HBA. alternately, SES2 is accessed via SMbus i2c commands. SGPIO however, uses a special iPass connector and is only supported by specific HBAs that have the ipass interface which combines SAS and the SGPIO signals.
I believe there are packages for both SES (sg-ses) and sgpio, and if you setup this stuff and properly configure it to match your enclosure, dmraid/mdraid should automatically set the LEDs. the problem is, there's a lot to configure. for instance, if your HBA has in fact this sgpio support, there's no standards for how the host talks to that.
having never actually done this (we buy packaged storage from vendors who take care of this stuff for us), thats about all I can suggest.
Hi John,
Thanx, this is the info I needed :)
I'm looking into building low-cost NAS devices seeing as the commercial stuff we already have are often on Atom or other slow-processor based equipment and also very limited in many aspects. Building it ourself, we could add faster CPU's, ECC RAM, better network cards, industrial grade motherboards, etc and not be limited to a vendor's software choice For example, one vendor has a good product line, but don't have RAID 10 (we've been requesting this for about a year and a half already). Another vendor doesn't have EXT4, NFS or iSCSI multi-path support. And another vendor chooses to cap the storage at a certain limit. Why, I don't know, but that's how they do it. Only one vendor has 10GBe NIC support, but then you can only install 1x 10GBe NIC per NAS. None of them has native ZFS support All of them run a flavor of Linux, generally Debian.
So, now I want to look into doing this myself. 2U / 3U chassis with redundant power supplies, industrial motherboards, server grade CPU (some of these have notebook CPU's), ECC RAM, multiple 10GBe NIC's, hot swap drive cages, etc and pretty much do exactly as they do. SuperMicro, IBM, Dell & HP all have decent storage chassis so now it's just a matter of getting the software to work nicely :)
I have looked at OpenFiler (very outdated), FreeNAS (a bit limited, 0.8 looks promising), Nexenta (very nice, but also very limited) and just plain'ol CentOS for OS's for the NAS's but haven't found something that could work as well as I like it to.
-
John R Pierce -
Jure Pečar -
Kay Diederichs -
Kwan Lowe -
Nico Kadel-Garcia -
Robert Heller -
Rudi Ahlers