Re: smartd causing SATA timeouts on sleeping drives

[Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>]

Andrew Paprocki wrote:
> Tejun/Bruce,
> 
> I tracked down the source of timeouts I have been frequently getting.
> It appears smartd is not properly handling drives that are spun down
> by the BIOS ACPI settings. I have SATA timeouts which occur every half
> hour (the default -i 1800 in smartd) that do not occur when smartd is
> not running. The drives smartd is configured to look at have a sleep
> time configured in the BIOS. When the drives are asleep, I get a soft
> reset every half hour as smartd attempts to access the drives. While
> in this state, smartd also reports bad state to syslog (e.g.
> temperature changes to 200C). Just for comparison, hddtemp knows the
> drives are sleeping:
> 
> # hddtemp /dev/sda
> /dev/sda: Hitachi HDS721010KLA330                 : drive is sleeping
> # ls /storage
> ... wakes up the drives ...
> # hddtemp /dev/sda
> /dev/sda: Hitachi HDS721010KLA330                 :  29 C or  F
> 
> I'm pasting the example cmd / timeout error / soft reset below. Also,
> I'm pasting the invalid settings which smartd detects when in this
> state. What needs to change for smartd to recognize drives are
> sleeping and either not perform its checks, or forcefully wake them up
> to perform them? (Should that be a configuration parameter in smartd?)

smartd should probably issue CHECK POWER MODE (0xe5) before issuing
other commands.  Bruce?

Thanks.

-- 
tejun