[CentOS] diagnosing noise

[John Hodrien]

On Thu, 3 Dec 2015, 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?
>
> 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?

For a disk, smartctl is the way forward, and look at the attributes.
T'interweb will advise on which three parameters are worth paying heed to.

smartctl -a /dev/sda

sensors (part of lmsensors) will report on some fans, maybe.

jh