Smartmontools is approaching its 20th anniversary. It fetches SMART and
related (meta) information from ATA, SCSI and NVMe storage devices.
To that list I could add SCSI Tape drives support (e.g. TapeAlert).
smartmontools comprises of two utilities:
- smartd: designed to run as a daemon, periodically checking disks,
reporting issues to the log and sending emails if configured
- smartctl: command line utility for probing disks and reporting
on what it finds
By default smartctl provides its output in human readable form. This is
not ideal for GUI programs that wrap smartctl (e.g. GSmarctControl).
To address this issue, the --json option, added in an earlier release,
has been extended.
The release announcement is here:
https://www.smartmontools.org/
Since it is maintained by older hackers (original meaning) we prefer
to use subversion for source code control. However for the git
generation it is mirrored at:
https://github.com/smartmontools/smartmontools
and other locations.
For detailed release information see:
https://www.smartmontools.org/browser/tags/RELEASE_7_3/smartmontools/NEWS
or the ChangeLog at the same location.
As an example of its flexibility smartctl can "speak" NVMe to a M2 module
inside a USB-C attached small enclosure. Linux sees that as a SCSI device
but smartctl, with an option like --device=sntjmicron gets the SMART data
in native NVMe. That option is needed because no-one has yet standardized
a SNTL (SCSI to NVMe Translation Layer). In this case the Jmicron chip in
the M2 enclosure has done the job ***.
Douglas Gilbert
*** via clever misuse of the SCSI ATA PASS THROUGH command
