smartctl - Can't run select span range

[Ubence Quevedo]

Hi to anyone still tuned in on this smartctl thread...

I created a script [which I'm sure could be a bit better]:
#!/bin/bash
# Starting
echo Starting at `date`
# Running a long smartctl test against /dev/disk0
smartctl -t force -t long /dev/disk0 > /dev/null
# Running a long smartctl test against /dev/disk2
smartctl -t force -t long /dev/disk2 > /Users/uquevedo/bin/smart_long.txt
# Setting duration variable against number of minutes from smartctl test
output
duration=`grep Please /Users/uquevedo/bin/smart_long.txt | awk '{print $3}'`
# Echoing duration
echo $duration
# Caffeinating sleep to keep system awak for smartctl long test to run,
also adding 10 minutes to test duration
echo "Sleeping for $((duration * 60 + 600)) seconds so long smartctl can
run to completion..."
caffeinate -i -m sleep `echo $((duration * 60 + 600))`
# Cleaning up tmp file
rm -vf /Users/uquevedo/bin/smart_long.txt
# Finished
echo Finished at `date`

The script is kicked off from the following cron entries for my user
account:
#Tell system at 12:01AM to turn on smart info
01 00 * * * smartctl -s on /dev/disk0
01 00 * * * smartctl -s on /dev/disk2
#Script to run smartctl long test at 12:02AM with caffeinate to keep system
awake for the test
02 00 * * * sh /Users/uquevedo/bin/smart_long.sh >>
/Users/uquevedo/.smart_long
#Tell system at 12:01PM to turn on smart info
01 12 * * * smartctl -s on /dev/disk0
01 12 * * * smartctl -s on /dev/disk2
#Script to run smartctl long test at 12:02PM with caffeinate to keep system
awake for the test
02 12 * * * sh /Users/uquevedo/bin/smart_long.sh >>
/Users/uquevedo/.smart_long

Which in turn are kicked off by root level cron jobs that wake the system
at midnight and noon:
#Tell system to wake at 12:00PM
00 12 * * * pmset repeat wakeorpoweron MTWRFSU 23:59:00
#Tell system to wake at Midnight
00 00 * * * pmset repeat wakeorpoweron MTWRFSU 11:59:00

If I run the smart_long.sh script through an interactive session, the sleep
command that is looking at the calculated seconds for how long the longest
smartctl command takes to run works just fine.

However, when this script is kicked off through cron, the redirected output
from the longest smartctl command creates a blank file which in turn only
makes for a 10 minute sleep instead of the desired length of sleep.

If I were to run a similar script in Linux through a cron job, I don't
think I'd have this same issue where the redirected output file is a zero
file.

I've tried a few different redirects of the stdout from the smartctl
command, but anything run from the cron job non-interactively creates a
zero file.

Anyone have any ideas why this is?  What am I missing or not taking into
account for?

Also, given all of the above workaround as another reason I would just love
the selective span range to just work for smartctl testing, but that's an
Apple problem.

-Ubence

On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 6:06 AM Ubence Quevedo <thatrat at gmail.com> wrote:

> Definitely going to give the sleep thing a try.
>
> Since I'm trying to automate this to kick off long smartctl tests at
> specific times, opening a separate window just for caffeinate won't be very
> efficient.  I've got some ideas on how to script this out.
>
> I'd still love it if Apple would just allow selective span test ranges
> instead of just short and long tests.
>
> -Ubence
>
> On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 5:36 AM Rainer Müller <raimue at macports.org> wrote:
>
>> On 2018-06-29 10:03, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>> >
>> > On Jun 28, 2018, at 19:43, Ubence Quevedo wrote:
>> >
>> >> I gave caffeinate a try, and set my system sleep time to a more
>> reasonable timeout [30 minutes], but since smartctl isn't an interactive
>> process [a tsr?], the system never stays awake long enough to finish a
>> whole test.  I even added the -m option to prevent the disk from idle
>> sleeping but that didn't help.
>> >
>> > Oh, right. As I recall, smartctl exits immediately, and the test occurs
>> on the disk in the background, and you later run smartctl again to get the
>> result.
>> >
>> > In that case, you can run smartctl normally, and then caffeinate a
>> sleep command that takes at least as long as the test. For example, if the
>> test will take 206 minutes, you could sleep for 207 minutes (12,420
>> seconds):
>> >
>> > caffeinate -i sleep 12420
>> >
>> > ("sleep" in this context means "wait this many seconds").
>>
>> You can just start caffeinate without any arguments in a separate
>> terminal window to prevent the system from sleeping until you kill the
>> process (with Ctrl-C).
>>
>> Rainer
>>
>
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