"smartd dead but subsys locked"

[Rick Stevens]

Gregory E. Garland wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> After putting in a new disk and re-installing RHEL4 ES, I get a "failed"
> message when booting and it is attempting to start the smartd service. I get
> the message "smartd dead but subsys locked" when checking the status in the
> service configuration tool. Other than the new disk, the only difference
> from the previous installation is that there is now an external drive used
> to back up the Windows XP installation connecting through a usb port. Any
> ideas on what the problem is?

Not all drives are SMART-compatible.  Check the ouput from "dmesg" and
the contents of "/var/log/messages" to see what's going on.

To unlock it, delete the "/var/lock/subsys/smartd" file.  I'd then try
to run it in debug mode using "smartd -d" and see what it's doing.  If
it runs OK, then use "CTRL-C" to get out of it and run it normally by
using the command "smartd".  You can then check your disk by running
"smartctl -i /dev/hda".

If it looks like the drive isn't SMART compatible or if smartd dies
in a weird way, then run "chkconfig --level 2345 smartd off" to disable
it from running at boot time.  smartd is a nice thing to have, but it
isn't critical to system operation.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-                       When in doubt, mumble.                       -
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