check_smart monitoring plugin

Last update: September 16, 2024

This is a monitoring plugin to monitor the values of SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) attributes of hard and solid state drives, using smartmontool's smartctl in the background.
(S)ATA, SCSI/SAS and NVMe drives are supported. The plugin is a fork of check_smart released in 2009 by Kurt Yoder. Since then the plugin has undergone a lot of changes. It allows to monitor drives behind hardware controllers and added a lot of parameters to fine tune the checks and set thresholds (on a per attribute setting).

Introduction to physical drive monitoring

Monitoring of physical hard drives (HDDs), solid state drives (SSDs) or NVMe drives is crucial in production environments. Whether the drives are running in a server or on a workstation, you want to know if a drive is starting to fail so you can pro-actively plan actions - before it's too late. See the following articles for real life examples:

Depending on the type of the drive, the SMART output is different. The plugin is able to handle ATA, SCSI and NVMe drives and adjust itself to the SMART output of these different interface types.

Monitoring (S)ATA drives

As of this writing (March 2020), the most used drives are currently ATA-based hard or solid state drives. The (S)ATA interface exists on all motherboards, the SATA standard is currently in version 3 allowing theoretical transfer speeds of up to 6Gbit/s. Both hard drives and solid state drives (with a SATA connector) are using the ATA SMART output.

The ATA S.M.A.R.T. table features a list of SMART attributes. These attributes can either be counters (example: Power_On_Hours) or show a specific value (example: Temperature). The attribute names are not always the same, depending on the vendors of the physical drive. A good overview of existing attributes can be found on Wikipedias SMART page.

The check_smart monitoring plugin runs a couple of checks on ATA drives. First the current health status of the drive is retrieved. If health of the drive seems to be OK, the plugin will retrieve all the SMART attributes and their current values and compare them to given thresholds (using the -w parameter, optional). The plugin adds performance data on single drive checks which is handy to long-term monitoring of drives.

Monitoring SCSI/SAS drives

Compared to ATA drives, SCSI drives do not have SMART attributes. The available data for analysis and pre-failure guessing is very limited. Basically the relevant information can only be found in the grown defect list counter. check_smart is actively monitoring this counter (thresholds are possible with -b parameter), besides doing the normal health and temperature checks.

The usage of SCSI drives is declining due to the rise of ATA-based SSD and NVMe drives. However note that SAS drives are basically SCSI drives and are still widely used in enterprise servers.

Monitoring NVMe drives

NVMe drives use, like ATA drives, a list of SMART attributes to help identify (pre-fail) problems of a drive. However the attributes are not compatible with the ATA attributes. check_smart mainly focuses on the Critical_Warning attribute which represents the drive status. The plugin also actively monitors the Media_and_Data_Integrity_Errors counter which could help to identify a failing NVMe drive.

The plugin adds performance data on single drive checks which is handy to long-term monitoring of drives.

Monitoring of NVMe drives is possible since check_smart 6.7.0.

Commercial support

If you are looking for commercial support for this monitoring plugin, need customized modifications or in general customized monitoring plugins, contact us at Infiniroot.com.

Download

check_smart.pl

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Download plugin and save it in your Nagios/Monitoring plugin folder (usually /usr/lib/nagios/plugins, depends on your distribution). Afterwards adjust the permissions (usually chmod 755).

Community contributions welcome on GitHub repo.

Package installation

The check_smart plugin is available on RPM-based Linux distributions as package monitoring-plugins-smart, maintained in the server:monitoring repository. Check the link for available Linux distributions.

Version history / Changelog

Requirements

Perl
smartmontools package (smartctl command is required)
sudo package (and relevant sudo permission entry in /etc/sudoers)
For cciss (HP SmartArray) controllers: smartmontools >= 5.37
For NVMe drives: smartmontools >= 6.5

Sudoers entry

This plugin needs to run as root, otherwise you're not able to lauch smartctl correctly. You have two options:

Launch the plugin itself with sudo
Launch the plugin itself as nagios user and the smartctl command as root with sudo

Here are some examples you can add to your sudoers with the command "visudo":

nagios ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/local/libexec/nagios/check_smart.pl # for option 1 on FreeBSD
nagios ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/local/sbin/smartctl # for option 2 on FreeBSD

nagios ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_smart.pl # for option 1 on Linux
nagios ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/smartctl # for option 2 on Linux

Definition of the parameters

Short	Long	Description
-d	--device	A physical block device to be SMART monitored, eg /dev/sda. Since 6.9.0 disk pci path is also working (/dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:03:00.1-ata-1). Pseudo-device /dev/bus/N is allowed.
-g	--global	A glob expression of physical devices to be monitored, eg -g "/dev/sd[a-z]" for devices /dev/sda until /dev/sdz or -g "/dev/sd{a,b,d}" for devices /dev/sda, /dev/sdb and /dev/sdd. If you have many drives exceeding the letter Z, you can use -g "/dev/sd*[a-z]" for all /dev/sda until /dev/sdzzzz. It is also possible to use -g in conjunction with drives behind megaraid, cciss or 3ware controllers. Example: -g /dev/sda -i 'megaraid,[0-3]'. The global check allows to quickly identify obvious errors on multiple drives, however it will not show details of each drive. This parameter will omit performance data. For a detailed check including performance data for historical graphing, a single drive check (using -d) is advised.
-i	--interface	Drive's interface type, must be one of: auto, ata, scsi, nvme, 3ware,N, areca,N, hpt,L/M/N, cciss,N, megaraid,N, aacraid,N,N,N See Supported RAID-Controllers on the Smartmontools wiki for interface types If used in combination with -g/--global, megaraid, 3ware and cciss interface supports glob expression, eg -i "megaraid,[8-9]"
-r*	--raw*	List (comma separated, without spaces!) of SMART attributes to check for their raw values. ATA default: 'Current_Pending_Sector, Reallocated_Sector_Ct, Program_Fail_Cnt_Total, Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt, Offline_Uncorrectable, Runtime_Bad_Block, Reported_Uncorrect, Reallocated_Event_Count' NVMe default: 'Media_and_Data_Integrity_Errors'
-b*	--bad*	Threshold value (integer) when to warn for N bad entries (ATA: Current Pending Sector, SCSI: Grown defect list) Note: Deprecated for ATA since check_smart version 6.0, use -w instead. Continue to use -b for SCSI drives.
-w*	--warn*	Comma separated list of thresholds for ATA drives (e.g. -w 'Reallocated_Sector_Ct=10,Current_Pending_Sector=62').
-e*	--exclude*	List of (comma separated) SMART attributes which should be excluded (=ignored) from checks. Note that these attributes still appear in performance data. Also supports "When_failed" values, e.g. "In_the_past" or "FAILING_NOW".
-E*	--exclude-all*	List of (comma separated) SMART attributes which should be excluded (=ignored) completely, for both checks and performance data. Also supports "When_failed" values, e.g. "In_the_past" or "FAILING_NOW".
-s*	--selftest*	Additionally check SMART's selftest log for errors.
-l*	--ssd-lifetime*	Additionally check attribute 'Percent_Lifetime_Remain' which is available on some SSD drives. Note that this counter is "reversed" meaning it starts from 0. This could be confusing to some, but makes sense for setting a threshold at a value close to 100. By enabling this option, 'Percent_Lifetime_Remain=90' is added to the warning list. See details for more information.
-q*	--quiet*	When faults are detected, only show failing drive(s) (only affects output when used with -g parameter).
-h*	--help	Show help/usage
-v*	--version*	Show plugin version
N/A	--skip-self-assessment	Skip the SMART self assessment health check (not recommended).
N/A	--skip-temp-check	Skip temperature comparison current vs. drive max temperature (not recommended).
N/A	--skip-load-cycles	Skip check of SMART attribute 193 (Load_Cycle_Count), deemed unsafe after reaching 600K load/unload cycles.
N/A	--hide-sn	Do not show serial number of drive(s) in output.
N/A	--debug*	Show debugging information

* optional parameter

Either -d or -g parameter is required. -i is always required.

-e and -E exclude lists can co-exist.

Usage / running the plugin on the command line

Usage:

./check_smart.pl (-d string|-g regex) -i string [-r list] [-w list] [-b int] [-e list] [-s] [--debug]

Example: Single SATA Drive:

./check_smart.pl -d /dev/sda -i ata
WARNING: Reallocated_Sector_Ct is non-zero (3), Program_Fail_Cnt_Total is non-zero (3), Runtime_Bad_Block is non-zero (3), Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt is non-zero (1)|Reallocated_Sector_Ct=3 Power_On_Hours=31415 Power_Cycle_Count=889 Program_Fail_Count_Chip=2 Erase_Fail_Count_Chip=0 Wear_Leveling_Count=873 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Chip=386 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot=752 Unused_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot=3280 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total=3 Erase_Fail_Count_Total=0 Runtime_Bad_Block=3 Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt=1 ECC_Error_Rate=1 Offline_Uncorrectable=0 CRC_Error_Count=262 Available_Reservd_Space=1630 Total_LBAs_Written=3363787529 Total_LBAs_Read=3278685684

Example: Single SATA Drive with warning thresholds:

./check_smart.pl -d /dev/sda -i ata -w 'Reallocated_Sector_Ct=4,Runtime_Bad_Block=4,Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt=2'
WARNING: Reallocated_Sector_Ct is non-zero (3) (but less than threshold 4), Program_Fail_Cnt_Total is non-zero (3), Runtime_Bad_Block is non-zero (3) (but less than threshold 4), Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt is non-zero (1) (but less than threshold 2)|Reallocated_Sector_Ct=3 Power_On_Hours=31415 Power_Cycle_Count=889 Program_Fail_Count_Chip=2 Erase_Fail_Count_Chip=0 Wear_Leveling_Count=873 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Chip=386 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot=752 Unused_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot=3280 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total=3 Erase_Fail_Count_Total=0 Runtime_Bad_Block=3 Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt=1 ECC_Error_Rate=1 Offline_Uncorrectable=0 CRC_Error_Count=262 Available_Reservd_Space=1630 Total_LBAs_Written=3363863033 Total_LBAs_Read=3278685684

Example: Single SATA Drive but exclude certain attribute checks (yet keep the attribute data in performance data):

./check_smart.pl -d /dev/sda -i ata -e 'Reallocated_Sector_Ct,Program_Fail_Cnt_Total'
WARNING: Runtime_Bad_Block is non-zero (3), Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt is non-zero (1)|Reallocated_Sector_Ct=3 Power_On_Hours=31416 Power_Cycle_Count=889 Program_Fail_Count_Chip=2 Erase_Fail_Count_Chip=0 Wear_Leveling_Count=873 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Chip=386 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot=752 Unused_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot=3280 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total=3 Erase_Fail_Count_Total=0 Runtime_Bad_Block=3 Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt=1 ECC_Error_Rate=1 Offline_Uncorrectable=0 CRC_Error_Count=262 Available_Reservd_Space=1630 Total_LBAs_Written=3363924329 Total_LBAs_Read=3278685684

Example: Single SATA Drive but completely exclude certain attribute from check and performance data:

./check_smart.pl -d /dev/sda -i ata -E 'Reallocated_Sector_Ct,Program_Fail_Cnt_Total'
WARNING: Runtime_Bad_Block is non-zero (3), Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt is non-zero (1)|Power_On_Hours=31416 Power_Cycle_Count=889 Program_Fail_Count_Chip=2 Erase_Fail_Count_Chip=0 Wear_Leveling_Count=873 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Chip=386 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot=752 Unused_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot=3280 Erase_Fail_Count_Total=0 Runtime_Bad_Block=3 Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt=1 ECC_Error_Rate=1 Offline_Uncorrectable=0 CRC_Error_Count=262 Available_Reservd_Space=1630 Total_LBAs_Written=3363924329 Total_LBAs_Read=3278685684

Example: Single SATA Drive with manual override which attributes should be checked for their raw values:

./check_smart.pl -d /dev/sda -i ata -r 'Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt'
WARNING: Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt is non-zero (1)|Reallocated_Sector_Ct=3 Power_On_Hours=31416 Power_Cycle_Count=889 Program_Fail_Count_Chip=2 Erase_Fail_Count_Chip=0 Wear_Leveling_Count=873 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Chip=386 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot=752 Unused_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot=3280 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total=3 Erase_Fail_Count_Total=0 Runtime_Bad_Block=3 Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt=1 ECC_Error_Rate=1 Offline_Uncorrectable=0 CRC_Error_Count=262 Available_Reservd_Space=1630 Total_LBAs_Written=3363995193 Total_LBAs_Read=3278685684

Example: Drive attached to MegaRAID controller:

./check_smart.pl -d /dev/sda -i megaraid,8

Example: Intel RAID on FreeBSD 9.2 ("kldload mfip.ko" required):

/usr/local/libexec/nagios/check_smart.pl -d /dev/pass0 -i scsi

Example: SATA drives behind Intel RAID on FreeBSD 9.2 ("kldload mfip.ko" required):

/usr/local/libexec/nagios/check_smart.pl -d /dev/pass12 -i sat

Example: SCSI drives behind HP RAID (CCISS) on FreeBSD 6.0:

/usr/local/libexec/nagios/check_smart.pl -d /dev/ciss0 -i cciss,0
OK: no SMART errors detected|defect_list=0 sent_blocks=3093462752 temperature=24;;68

/usr/local/libexec/nagios/check_smart.pl -d /dev/ciss0 -i cciss,3
WARNING: 48 Elements in grown defect list | defect_list=48 sent_blocks=1137657348 temperature=22;;68

Example: Using threshold option (-b) to ignore 1 bad element, warning only when 2 bad elements are found:

/usr/local/libexec/nagios/check_smart.pl -d /dev/ciss0 -i cciss,1 -b 2
OK: 1 Elements in grown defect list (but less than threshold 2)|defect_list=1;2;2;; sent_blocks=2769458900762624 temperature=27;;65

Example: Check all SATA disks (sda - sdz) at the same time on Linux:

/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_smart.pl -g "/dev/sd[a-z]" -i ata
OK: [/dev/sda] - Device is clean --- [/dev/sdb] - Device is clean|

Example: Check all SCSI disks behind Intel RAID on FreeBSD 9.2 ("kldload mfip.ko" required):

/usr/local/libexec/nagios/check_smart.pl -g "/dev/pass[1-9]" -i scsi
OK: [/dev/pass0] - Device is clean --- [/dev/pass1] - Device is clean --- [/dev/pass2] - Device is clean --- [/dev/pass3] - Device is clean --- [/dev/pass4] - Device is clean --- [/dev/pass5] - Device is clean --- [/dev/pass6] - Device is clean --- [/dev/pass7] - Device is clean --- [/dev/pass8] - Device is clean --- [/dev/pass9] - Device is clean |

Example: Single SCSI drive on FreeBSD 10.1:

/usr/local/libexec/nagios/check_smart.pl -d /dev/da0 -i scsi
OK: no SMART errors detected. |sent_blocks=14067306 temperature=34;;60

Example: Check multiple drives behind a HP Proliant raid controller (cciss interface):

/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_smart.pl -g /dev/sda -i "cciss,[0-3]"
OK: [cciss,1] - Device is clean --- [cciss,2] - Device is clean --- [cciss,3] - Device is clean|

Example: Check a single NVMe drive:

/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_smart.pl -d /dev/nvme0 -i nvme
OK: Drive Samsung SSD 970 PRO 512GB S/N XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX: no SMART errors detected. |Temperature=34 Available_Spare=100 Available_Spare_Threshold=10 Percentage_Used=0 Data_Units_Read=2854 Data_Units_Written=107590 Host_Read_Commands=67150 Host_Write_Commands=1406316 Controller_Busy_Time=20 Power_Cycles=16 Power_On_Hours=105 Unsafe_Shutdowns=6 Media_and_Data_Integrity_Errors=0 Error_Information_Log_Entries=0 Warning__Comp._Temperature_Time=0 Critical_Comp._Temperature_Time=0 Temperature_Sensor_1=34 Temperature_Sensor_2=33

Example: Check multiple NVMe drives:

/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_smart.pl -g "/dev/nvme[0-9]" -i nvme
OK: [/dev/nvme0] - Device is clean --- [/dev/nvme1] - Device is clean|

Command definition (NRPE)

Example command definition for single drive in your nrpe.cfg:

command[check_smart]=sudo /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_smart.pl -d $ARG1$ -i $ARG2$ -w $ARG3$

Example command definition for multiple drives using -g parameter in your nrpe.cfg:

command[check_smart_multidrive]=sudo /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_smart.pl -g $ARG1$ -i $ARG2$ -w $ARG3$

Service definition

Service definition in Nagios, Icinga 1.x, Shinken, Naemon

Basic check of a single drive (or drive in software raid):

# Check SMART of a typical single disk (or used in software raid)
define service{
  use generic-service
  host_name mylinux1
  service_description Disk SMART Status SDA
  check_command check_nrpe!check_smart!-a "/dev/sda" "sat" "Current_Pending_Sector=14,Reallocated_Sector_Count=3"
}

Check SMART of multiple disks at same time:

# Check SMART of multiple disks with regex (looking for /dev/sda until /dev/sdf)
define service{
  use generic-service
  host_name mylinux1
  service_description Disk SMART Status
  check_command check_nrpe!check_smart_all!-a "/dev/sd[a-f]" "sat" "Current_Pending_Sector=14,Reallocated_Sector_Count=3"
}

Check SMART of a drive behind a cciss (HP SmartArray) controller:

# Check SMART of a drive behind a cciss (HP SmartArray) raid controller
define service{
  use generic-service
  host_name myhpproliant1
  service_description Disk SMART Status cciss2
  check_command check_nrpe!check_smart!-a "/dev/cciss/c0d0" "cciss,2" "Current_Pending_Sector=14,Reallocated_Sector_Count=3"
}

Here the argument 3 ($ARG3$) is "Current_Pending_Sector=14,Reallocated_Sector_Count=3". This means that this drive already has 13 pending sectors and 2 reallocated sectors. The warning thesholds are set to 14 for the Current_Pending_Sector attribute and to 3 for the Reallocated_Sector_Count attribute. As soon as the drive reaches 14 (or more) pending sectors or 3 (or more) reallocated sectors, the plugin will return a warning. This helps to see if a disk is really failing and the number of defect sectors are growing.

Service object definition Icinga 2.x

Check a single SATA drive with specific warning threshold

# SMART Check of drive sda
object Service "Hardware" {
  import "generic-service"
  host_name "linuxserver1"
  check_command = "nrpe"
  vars.nrpe_command = "check_smart"
  vars.nrpe_arguments = ["/dev/sda", "sat", "Current_Pending_Sector=14,Reallocated_Sector_Count=3"]
}

Screenshots

check_smart multiple drives with drive names

check_smart multiple drives in icingaweb2

check_smart all ok with values below threshold

Introduction
Commercial Support
Download
Version history / changelog
Requirements
Sudoers entry
Definition of parameters
Usage
Command definition (NRPE)
Service definition
Screenshots