On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 6:21 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel at gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Rudi Ahlers <Rudi at 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. -- Kind Regards Rudi Ahlers SoftDux Website: http://www.SoftDux.com Technical Blog: http://Blog.SoftDux.com Office: 087 805 9573 Cell: 082 554 7532