[CentOS] /var goes read-only

Mon Dec 4 22:22:24 UTC 2006
Kevan Benson <kbenson at a-1networks.com>

On Sunday 03 December 2006 21:22, John Newbigin wrote:
> Kevan Benson wrote:
> > On Friday 01 December 2006 15:24, Joshua Gimer wrote:
> >> Thanks, that is what we were thinking was happening. Smartd will not
> >> start at boot,  it parses the config file just fine and then fails.
> >
> > Well, unless that's different than noted behavior before there were
> > problems, that doesn't really indicate a bad drive any more than a
> > drive/driver that doesn't support smartd.  Smartd doesn't work on most
> > sata drives with the sata driver included in the stock CentOS kernel.
>
> smart does work, the default config from from redhat is wrong see bug
> #176835 and #187181.  The output from smartctl used to be wrong.  The
> correct command was sent by Alfred
>
> Use '-d ata'.  -d is for device type, not debug.
>
> Older versions of smart incorrectly said to use '-d libata'.  Old
> versions of CentOS-4 did not support smart on sata but no one would be
> running anything that old would they?
>
> If you want smartd to start at boot, edit /etc/smartd.conf and add '-d ata'
>
> You should probably also read the instructions because out of the box it
> probably won't do much useful work.
>
> My config file looks like this:
> /dev/sda -d ata -a -m smart-errors at xxxx.com -s S/../.././02|L/../01/./04
> -I 1 -I 194 -I 195

I remember when I first started encountering this, I researched it and found 
that the kernel module/subsystem (libata) was noted to not support smartd, 
and I hadn't seen anything noting that the regular ata command set worked.

Or maybe I just went by the smartd debug error message (smartd -d) which 
indicates that SATA just plain isn't supported, which seems to be incorrect 
based on the bugs you mentioned.  In any case, it looks like I can use smartd 
on lots of system I thought I couldn't, thanks for the info.



-- 
- Kevan Benson
- A-1 Networks