[CentOS] Alarming (?) smartd reports

[William L. Maltby]

On Wed, 2008-09-10 at 21:41 -0700, MHR wrote:
> I decided, after the last discussion of smartd and S.M.A.R.T. disks,
> to take a look in my /var/log/messages, and I'm seeing fair bit of
> this:
> 
> Sep 10 20:11:23 mhrichter smartd[3361]: Device: /dev/sda, 4294967295
> Offline uncorrectable sectors
> Sep 10 20:41:23 mhrichter smartd[3361]: Device: /dev/hdb, 21 Currently
> unreadable (pending) sectors
> <snip>

> Google is not particularly informative on this subject - anyone know
> more than general suggestions about dd, badblocks, etc.?  This is my
> boot and primary system disk (has been for some time), but the error
> message is essentially meaningless (to me, right now).

A google using

    manufacturer smart site::centos.org

should lead to a couple good threads on this list. I'd cite the recent
related, but I'm short of time ATM.

As long as you only see one, or very few, errors and very limited growth
in the number, no worry IMO. However, to confirm this, use smartctl to
get a full check and logging done. Then use it to review the logs.

I've got one that has had 2 errors for more than 6 months now. Used the
manufacturer tools, it got repaired, only one occurrence since.

> 
> Thanks.
> 
> mhr
> <snip>

-- 
Bill