what all hard drive tool are there and what all chekups should i do to keep my drive healthy

Hi amol,

There are following tools:-


fsck
debugfs
mdadm
tune2fs
mkfs
mke2fs
mkreiserfs

Read the respective man pages or info pages.
defrag2fs (Had heard in some forum but never seen or used the tool)
just no need to do anything special to keep your harddisk healthy. Don't shutdown the machine directly and say yes to check the harddisk whenever it asks for and your hdd will remain healthy(untill you decide to keep it in cool wet place)

actually i had some problem and my m/c could not start up properly
so my mc started in some other mode and i was prompted to to run fsck
after which it recovered

acually i was prompted during installation that my partion table had some "fixable errors"
i also had error while executing find command and smartd sends me mail at /var/spool/mail......
that there is some error in my hard drive. if u r intrested i can show u the mails

here is a tool i can add because my smartctl.


thanx alot aniruddha

What errors did you get amol?

Also show some extract of those mails .

This email was generated by the smartd daemon running on:

host name: localhost.localdomain
DNS domain: localdomain
NIS domain: (none)

The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon:

Device: /dev/hdd, 1 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors

For details see host's SYSLOG (default: /var/log/messages).

You can also use the smartctl utility for further investigation.
No additional email messages about this problem will be sent.

hey when i run the following command i used to get error

find / -type f -name httpd.conf

and at times my system stops responding temporeily and there is whole lot of hard drive acivity and i know this is some error in the hard drive
ok i will execute the command and show you the out put asap

Ok,
are you now able to access your machine in any other mode?
If yes you may try to find out if there are any mounting / filesystem /harddisk related messages in /var/log/messages
or using dmesg command

this is slightly different error logged by smart demon


This email was generated by the smartd daemon running on:

host name: localhost.localdomain
DNS domain: localdomain
NIS domain: (none)

The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon:

Device: /dev/hdd, 1 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors

For details see host's SYSLOG (default: /var/log/messages).

You can also use the smartctl utility for further investigation.
No additional email messages about this problem will be sent.


i have recived number of such emails i mean both of them

well i am using korn application to see /var/sppol/mai/root

here is the error

[root@localhost ~]# find / -type f -name httpd.conf
/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
/mnt/hda1/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/conf/httpd.conf
find: WARNING: Hard link count is wrong for /proc: this may be a bug in your filesystem driver. Automatically turning on find's -noleaf option. Earlier results may have failed to include directories that should have been searched.

dmesg works for sure bu i dont understand whatit say it says whole lot of things and will post it if you say

hpoe fully by now you must have been convinced that there is fo sure something wrong with my m/c's hardrive or partion table

ok i am also posting the ouput of dmesg


[root@localhost ~]# dmesg
Linux version 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 (bhcompile@decompose.build.redhat.com) (gcc vers
ion 4.0.0 20050525 (Red Hat 4.0.0-9)) #1 Thu Jun 2 22:55:56 EDT 2005
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f800 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009f800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000e7800 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000000bef0000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000bef0000 - 000000000beffc00 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 000000000beffc00 - 000000000bf00000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 000000000bf00000 - 000000000c000000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fff00000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
0MB HIGHMEM available.
190MB LOWMEM available.
Using x86 segment limits to approximate NX protection
On node 0 totalpages: 48880
DMA zone: 4096 pages, LIFO batch:1
Normal zone: 44784 pages, LIFO batch:15
HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
DMI not present.
ACPI: RSDP (v000 PTLTD ) @ 0x000f7470
ACPI: RSDT (v001 PTLTD RSDT 0x06040000 LTP 0x00000000) @ 0x0befcb71
ACPI: FADT (v001 HP Hawk 0x06040000 PTL 0x000f4240) @ 0x0beffb64
ACPI: BOOT (v001 PTLTD $SBFTBL$ 0x06040000 LTP 0x00000001) @ 0x0beffbd8
ACPI: DSDT (v001 INTEL Whitney 0x06040000 MSFT 0x0100000b) @ 0x00000000
ACPI: PM-Timer IO Port: 0x1008
Allocating PCI resources starting at 0c000000 (gap: 0c000000:f3f00000)
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet
Initializing CPU#0
CPU 0 irqstacks, hard=c0457000 soft=c0456000
PID hash table entries: 1024 (order: 10, 16384 bytes)
Detected 868.880 MHz processor.
Using pmtmr for high-res timesource
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Dentry cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Memory: 188332k/195520k available (2518k kernel code, 6608k reserved, 690k data,
180k init, 0k highmem)
Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok.
Calibrating delay loop... 1724.41 BogoMIPS (lpj=862208)
Security Framework v1.0.0 initialized
SELinux: Initializing.
SELinux: Starting in permissive mode
selinux_register_security: Registering secondary module capability
Capability LSM initialized as secondary
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
CPU: After generic identify, caps: 0383f9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
00000000 00000000
CPU: After vendor identify, caps: 0383f9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 0
0000000 00000000
CPU: L1 I cache: 16K, L1 D cache: 16K
CPU: L2 cache: 256K
CPU: After all inits, caps: 0383f1ff 00000000 00000000 00000040 00000000 0000000
0 00000000
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU: Intel Pentium III (Coppermine) stepping 06
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
ACPI: setting ELCR to 0200 (from 0e00)
checking if image is initramfs... it is
softlockup thread 0 started up.
Freeing initrd memory: 1081k freed
NET: Registered protocol family 16
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfd99e, last bus=1
PCI: Using configuration type 1
mtrr: v2.0 (20020519)
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20050309
ACPI: Interpreter enabled
ACPI: Using PIC for interrupt routing
ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
Boot video device is 0000:00:01.0
PCI: Transparent bridge - 0000:00:1e.0
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 *9 10 11 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 *9 10 11 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 *10 11 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 *11 14 15)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.SLOT._PRT]
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
pnp: PnP ACPI init
ACPI-1138: *** Error: Method execution failed [\_SB_.PCI0.LPC0.SIO_.LPT_._CR
S] (Node cbdc7480), AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT
ACPI-0158: *** Error: Method execution failed [\_SB_.PCI0.LPC0.SIO_.LPT_._CR
S] (Node cbdc7480), AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT
pnp: PnPACPI: METHOD_NAME__CRS failure for PNP0400
pnp: PnP ACPI: found 13 devices
usbcore: registered new driver usbfs
usbcore: registered new driver hub
PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing
PCI: If a device doesn't work, try "pci=routeirq". If it helps, post a report
pnp: 00:00: ioport range 0x1000-0x105f could not be reserved
pnp: 00:00: ioport range 0x1060-0x107f has been reserved
pnp: 00:00: ioport range 0x1180-0x11bf has been reserved
pnp: 00:00: ioport range 0x1c00-0x1c7f has been reserved
pnp: 00:00: ioport range 0x4d0-0x4d1 has been reserved
pnp: 00:00: ioport range 0x800-0x87f has been reserved
Simple Boot Flag at 0x36 set to 0x1
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16ac)
apm: overridden by ACPI.
audit: initializing netlink socket (disabled)
audit(1147306168.901:1): initialized
Total HugeTLB memory allocated, 0
VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
SELinux: Registering netfilter hooks
Initializing Cryptographic API
ksign: Installing public key data
Loading keyring
- Added public key 42BD35A990375F72
- User ID: Red Hat, Inc. (Kernel Module GPG key)
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Real Time Clock Driver v1.12
Linux agpgart interface v0.101 (c) Dave Jones
agpgart: Detected an Intel i810 E Chipset.
agpgart: AGP aperture is 64M @ 0xf8000000
PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:KBC0,PNP0f13:MSE0] at 0x60,0x64 irq 1,12
serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 76 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
io scheduler noop registered
io scheduler anticipatory registered
io scheduler deadline registered
io scheduler cfq registered
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 16384K size 1024 blocksize
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
ICH: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:1f.1
ICH: chipset revision 2
ICH: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0x10a0-0x10a7, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbMA
ide1: BM-DMA at 0x10a8-0x10af, BIOS settings: hdcio, hddMA
Probing IDE interface ide0...
hda: SAMSUNG SP0802N, ATA DISK drive
hdb: ST320413A, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
Probing IDE interface ide1...
hdc: SAMSUNG CD-ROM SC-152L, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: TSSTcorpCD/DVDW SH-W162C, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: max request size: 1024KiB
hda: 156368016 sectors (80060 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=16383/255/63, UDMA(66)
hda: cache flushes supported
hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 >
hdb: max request size: 128KiB
hdb: Host Protected Area detected.
current capacity is 39102336 sectors (20020 MB)
native capacity is 39102337 sectors (20020 MB)
hdb: Host Protected Area disabled.
hdb: 39102337 sectors (20020 MB) w/512KiB Cache, CHS=38792/16/63, UDMA(66)
hdb: cache flushes not supported
hdb: hdb1
hdc: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, DMA
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
hdd: ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
usbcore: registered new driver hiddev
usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.01:USB HID core driver
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
md: md driver 0.90.1 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP: routing cache hash table of 256 buckets, 8Kbytes
TCP established hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 8192 (order: 5, 229376 bytes)
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 8192)
Initializing IPsec netlink socket
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
ACPI wakeup devices:
KBC0 SLOT USB AC97
ACPI: (supports S0 S1 S5)
Freeing unused kernel memory: 180k freed
input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard on isa0060/serio0
input: GenPS/2 Genius Wheel Mouse on isa0060/serio1
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
security: 3 users, 6 roles, 764 types, 87 bools
security: 55 classes, 180131 rules
SELinux: Completing initialization.
SELinux: Setting up existing superblocks.
SELinux: initialized (dev hda7, type ext3), uses xattr
SELinux: initialized (dev tmpfs, type tmpfs), uses transition SIDs
SELinux: initialized (dev selinuxfs, type selinuxfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev mqueue, type mqueue), not configured for labeling
SELinux: initialized (dev hugetlbfs, type hugetlbfs), not configured for labelin
g
SELinux: initialized (dev devpts, type devpts), uses transition SIDs
SELinux: initialized (dev eventpollfs, type eventpollfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev tmpfs, type tmpfs), uses transition SIDs
SELinux: initialized (dev futexfs, type futexfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev pipefs, type pipefs), uses task SIDs
SELinux: initialized (dev sockfs, type sockfs), uses task SIDs
SELinux: initialized (dev proc, type proc), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev bdev, type bdev), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev rootfs, type rootfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev sysfs, type sysfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev usbfs, type usbfs), uses genfs_contexts
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.27
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] enabled at IRQ 9
PCI: setting IRQ 9 as level-triggered
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:01:09.0[A] -> Link [LNKB] -> GSI 9 (level, low) -> IRQ
9
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0x2000, 00:08:a1:8a:41:cf, IRQ 9
eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'
snd_intel8x0: Unknown parameter `'
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.5[B] -> Link [LNKB] -> GSI 9 (level, low) -> IRQ
9
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1f.5 to 64
intel8x0_measure_ac97_clock: measured 49209 usecs
intel8x0: clocking to 48000
hw_random hardware driver 1.0.0 loaded
USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.2
SELinux: initialized (dev debugfs, type debugfs), uses genfs_contexts
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] enabled at IRQ 11
PCI: setting IRQ 11 as level-triggered
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.2[D] -> Link [LNKD] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ
11
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1f.2 to 64
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1f.2: UHCI Host Controller
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1f.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1f.2: irq 11, io base 0x00001080
hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
SELinux: initialized (dev ramfs, type ramfs), uses genfs_contexts
NET: Registered protocol family 10
Disabled Privacy Extensions on device c03e6820(lo)
IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver
Bluetooth: Core ver 2.7
NET: Registered protocol family 31
Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
Bluetooth: HCI USB driver ver 2.8
usbcore: registered new driver hci_usb
audit(1147306201.514:2): avc: denied { read } for pid=1278 comm="hwclock" nam
e=localtime dev=hda7 ino=4030512 scontext=system_u:system_r:hwclock_t tcontext=r
ootbject_r:etc_t tclass=file
audit(1147306201.514:3): avc: denied { read } for pid=1278 comm="hwclock" nam
e=localtime dev=hda7 ino=4030512 scontext=system_u:system_r:hwclock_t tcontext=r
ootbject_r:etc_t tclass=file
ACPI: Power Button (FF) [PWRF]
ibm_acpi: ec object not found
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
device-mapper: 4.4.0-ioctl (2005-01-12) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com
audit(1147306200.630:4): avc: denied { write } for pid=1357 comm="fsck" name=
rhgb-console dev=ramfs ino=4776 scontext=system_u:system_r:fsadm_t tcontext=syst
em_ubject_r:ramfs_t tclass=fifo_file
EXT3 FS on hda7, internal journal
SELinux: initialized (dev tmpfs, type tmpfs), uses transition SIDs
NTFS driver 2.1.22 [Flags: R/O MODULE].
NTFS volume version 3.1.
SELinux: initialized (dev hda1, type ntfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev hda5, type vfat), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev hda6, type vfat), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev hdb1, type vfat), uses genfs_contexts
Adding 2096440k swap on /dev/hda8. Priority:-1 extents:1
SELinux: initialized (dev binfmt_misc, type binfmt_misc), uses genfs_contexts
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
ip_conntrack version 2.1 (1527 buckets, 12216 max) - 272 bytes per conntrack
SELinux: initialized (dev rpc_pipefs, type rpc_pipefs), uses genfs_contexts
Bluetooth: L2CAP ver 2.7
Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.5
Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
SELinux: initialized (dev autofs, type autofs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev autofs, type autofs), uses genfs_contexts
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 [PCSPP,TRISTATE,EPP]
lp0: using parport0 (polling).
lp0: console ready
application amarokapp uses obsolete OSS audio interface
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
CSLIP: code copyright 1989 Regents of the University of California
PPP generic driver version 2.4.2
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
application firefox-bin uses obsolete OSS audio interface
application amarokapp uses obsolete OSS audio interface
application firefox-bin uses obsolete OSS audio interface
eth0: link down
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
eth0: link down
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
application amarokapp uses obsolete OSS audio interface
application firefox-bin uses obsolete OSS audio interface
application amarokapp uses obsolete OSS audio interface
application firefox-bin uses obsolete OSS audio interface
application amarokapp uses obsolete OSS audio interface
[root@localhost ~]#

hey how do i know if my swap is sufficient

Hi again,

dmesg looks ok to me. Have you installed / on a previous / partition? (ie. which was used to be / on previous installation).

You said how can you know if swap is sufficient:_


There comes the free command which shows you swap and ram usage. After observing for a few days / times you will get the idea:-


[root@shakti ~]# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 749 726 22 0 33 361
-/+ buffers/cache: 332 417
Swap: 1533 0 1533

[root@shakti mem]# vmstat 1 3
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
1 0 0 28660 37056 317848 0 0 140 55 1595 2027 11 7 80 3
0 0 0 29988 37056 317848 0 0 0 0 1396 1597 6 4 90 0
0 0 0 29788 37060 318012 0 0 168 56 1732 2100 10 7 72 11



The first row shows your server averages. The si (swap in) and so (swap out) columns show if you have been swapping (i.e. needing to dip into 'virtual' memory) in order to run your server's applications. The si/so numbers should be 0 (or close to it). Numbers in the hundreds or thousands indicate your server is swapping heavily. This consumes a lot of CPU and other server resources and you would get a very (!) significant benefit from adding more memory to your server.

Some other columns of interest: The r (runnable) b (blocked) and w (waiting) columns help see your server load. Waiting processes are swapped out. Blocked processes are typically waiting on I/O. The runnable column is the number of processes trying to something. These numbers combine to form the 'load' value on your server. Typically you want the load value to be one or less per CPU in your server.

The bi (bytes in) and bo (bytes out) column show disk I/O (including swapping memory to/from disk) on your server.

The us (user), sy (system) and id (idle) show the amount of CPU your server is using. The higher the idle value, the better.

hooooooh..