Receiving email notification from smartd (smartmontools)

Question

Hello,

To get information about my HDD drive condition, I configured smartmontools daemon (through smartd.conf) like this:

dev/sdb -I 194 -a -o on -S on -s (S/../.././03|L/../../6/04) \
    -m [email protected] -M exec /usr/share/smartmontools/smartd-runner

Also, by adding “-M test”, I tested email notifications and received test email message.

As you see, each morning my HDD is short tested, but I didn’t receive any email notification about test results.

Probably, notifications are sent when something is getting wrong, am I right on this point? I mean, is it normal not to receive anything if tests are passed ok?

Right now my drive reports OK status with smartctl -H command. I use Debian Etch and Sendmail.

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

Since you know about -M test, you have obviously found the chapter about the -M option in the documentation. In the same chapter you will find:

exec  PATH  -  run the executable PATH instead of the default mail command,
               when smartd needs to send email.  PATH must point to an
               executable binary file or script.

The important word being "instead". If smartd-runner doesn't send out mail by itself, you will not be sent any messages.

What does smartd-runner do anyway? I'm not familiar with that script.

To answer your question: no mail is sent when there are no errors to report:

once - send only one warning email for each type of disk problem detected.
       This is the default.