One or more disks are failing

[Antonio Olivares]

Dear folks,

This little program is getting to be annoying :(,

Disk Notifications
/usr/libexec/gdu-notification-daemon --delay
Provides notifications related to disks

I have removed it, at least from Starting up. It tells me "One or more disks are failing", My machine has a new disk, it has just been built. The disk is new, what is happening?  It tells me this on two of my machines.

smolt profile: 
    http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pub_3cbd7490-9741-46ec-8513-d22674a7fa0a (public)

In case it is relevant to my question/rant/

Thanks,

Antonio

[Antonio M]

2009/4/28 Antonio Olivares :
> Dear folks,
>
> This little program is getting to be annoying :(,
>
> Disk Notifications
> /usr/libexec/gdu-notification-daemon --delay
> Provides notifications related to disks
>
> I have removed it, at least from Starting up. It tells me "One or more disks are failing", My machine has a new disk, it has just been built. The disk is new, what is happening?  It tells me this on two of my machines.
>
> smolt profile:
>        http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pub_3cbd7490-9741-46ec-8513-d22674a7fa0a (public)
>
> In case it is relevant to my question/rant/
>
> Thanks,
>
> Antonio

same here on my laptop, I assume that there is some bug...disk is running fine.

[Matthias Clasen]

On Tue, 2009-04-28 at 00:42 +0200, Antonio M wrote:
> 2009/4/28 Antonio Olivares :
> > Dear folks,
> >
> > This little program is getting to be annoying :(,
> >
> > Disk Notifications
> > /usr/libexec/gdu-notification-daemon --delay
> > Provides notifications related to disks
> >
> > I have removed it, at least from Starting up. It tells me "One or more disks are failing", My machine has a new disk, it has just been built. The disk is new, what is happening?  It tells me this on two of my machines.
> >
> > smolt profile:
> >        http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pub_3cbd7490-9741-46ec-8513-d22674a7fa0a (public)
> >
> > In case it is relevant to my question/rant/

If you file a bug, you will be asked to provide data that'll allow David
and Lennart to weed out these false positives. Thanks,

Matthias

[Nikolay Vladimirov]

2009/4/28 Matthias Clasen:
> On Tue, 2009-04-28 at 00:42 +0200, Antonio M wrote:
> > 2009/4/28 Antonio Olivares:
> > > Dear folks,
> > >
> > > This little program is getting to be annoying :(,
> > >
> > > Disk Notifications
> > > /usr/libexec/gdu-notification-daemon --delay
> > > Provides notifications related to disks
> > >
> > > I have removed it, at least from Starting up. It tells me "One or more disks are failing", My machine has a new disk, it has just been built. The disk is new, what is happening?  It tells me this on two of my machines.
> > >
> > > smolt profile:
> > >        http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pub_3cbd7490-9741-46ec-8513-d22674a7fa0a (public)
> > >
> > > In case it is relevant to my question/rant/
>
> If you file a bug, you will be asked to provide data that'll allow David
> and Lennart to weed out these false positives. Thanks,
>
> Matthias

I'm also experiencing something similar on T41. The disk is an old
fujitsu 40GB hard drive and I assumed that it is really failing. How
can I check this to be sure if it is failing or not? Also it will be
nice if there is a GUI way to turn off the annoying notification on
every login.

[Nikolay Vladimirov]

2009/4/28 Nikolay Vladimirov :
> I'm also experiencing something similar on T41. The disk is an old
> fujitsu 40GB hard drive and I assumed that it is really failing. How
> can I check this to be sure if it is failing or not? Also it will be
> nice if there is a GUI way to turn off the annoying notification on
> every login.
>
> --
> NV

Forgot to mention that I'm using default fedora layout on the whole
disk( that's LVM) + encryption of the whole disk. And dmesg and fsck
don't show any filesystem corruption. That's why I think there is
still life in the disk.

[John Summerfield]

Nikolay Vladimirov wrote:
> > Matthias
>
> I'm also experiencing something similar on T41. The disk is an old
> fujitsu 40GB hard drive and I assumed that it is really failing. How
> can I check this to be sure if it is failing or not?

Go to your disk manufacturer's website and look for any diagnostic 
tools. IBM, before it got out of the disk business, had its Drive 
Fitness Test program on a floppy disk image of PCDOS 2000 (or so) ready 
for users to download, write to a floppy and boot. Hitachi inherited 
that, but I don't know the state of play.

Other vendors (eg Seagate) also provide test programs for their disks. 
Some _might_ require Windows.

I note that HP's most recent (that I've seen) diagnostics for its _PCs_ 
boots and runs on Linux. My IBM Thinkpad came with diagnostics in a 
vendor partition.

[Nikolay Vladimirov]

2009/4/28 John Summerfield:
> Nikolay Vladimirov wrote:
> > > Matthias
> >
> > I'm also experiencing something similar on T41. The disk is an old
> > fujitsu 40GB hard drive and I assumed that it is really failing. How
> > can I check this to be sure if it is failing or not?
>
> Go to your disk manufacturer's website and look for any diagnostic tools.
> IBM, before it got out of the disk business, had its Drive Fitness Test
> program on a floppy disk image of PCDOS 2000 (or so) ready for users to
> download, write to a floppy and boot. Hitachi inherited that, but I don't
> know the state of play.
>
> Other vendors (eg Seagate) also provide test programs for their disks. Some
> _might_ require Windows.
>
> I note that HP's most recent (that I've seen) diagnostics for its _PCs_
> boots and runs on Linux. My IBM Thinkpad came with diagnostics in a vendor
> partition.

Thanks for that I think I've got some diagnostic CD somewhere and the
vendor partition is still there I will double check the disk and
report a bug if everything is OK with it.

[Felix Miata]

On 2009/04/28 20:42 (GMT+0800) John Summerfield composed:
> Go to your disk manufacturer's website and look for any diagnostic 
> tools. IBM, before it got out of the disk business, had its Drive 
> Fitness Test program on a floppy disk image of PCDOS 2000 (or so) ready 
> for users to download, write to a floppy and boot. Hitachi inherited 
> that, but I don't know the state of play.
> Other vendors (eg Seagate) also provide test programs for their disks. 
> Some _might_ require Windows.

Or goto http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and download and burn and boot it. It
has all the drive manufacturers' disk test software on it, among many other
useful diagnostic and configuration utilities.

[Nikolay Vladimirov]

2009/4/28 Felix Miata:
> On 2009/04/28 20:42 (GMT+0800) John Summerfield composed:
> > Go to your disk manufacturer's website and look for any diagnostic
> > tools. IBM, before it got out of the disk business, had its Drive
> > Fitness Test program on a floppy disk image of PCDOS 2000 (or so) ready
> > for users to download, write to a floppy and boot. Hitachi inherited
> > that, but I don't know the state of play.
> > Other vendors (eg Seagate) also provide test programs for their disks.
> > Some _might_ require Windows.
>
> Or goto http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and download and burn and boot it. It
> has all the drive manufacturers' disk test software on it, among many other
> useful diagnostic and configuration utilities.
> --
> "He who works his land will have abundant food, but the
> one who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty."
>                                Proverbs 28:19 NIV
>
> Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409
>
> Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

The built-in IBM checks did work and the disk has bad sectors so it's
a very very nice feature this disk monitor.
It was very helpful and somewhat Fedora exclusive. In the past week or
so there were gentoo, arch, ubuntu and XP(with the full built in IBM
suite) installed on the machine. None of them had a big red "Your disk
is damaged". I'm very happy that fedora could help me with that.

Thanks,
Nikolay Vladimirov

[John Summerfield]

Nikolay Vladimirov wrote:
> The built-in IBM checks did work and the disk has bad sectors so it's
> a very very nice feature this disk monitor.
> It was very helpful and somewhat Fedora exclusive. In the past week or
> so there were gentoo, arch, ubuntu and XP(with the full built in IBM
> suite) installed on the machine. None of them had a big red "Your disk
> is damaged". I'm very happy that fedora could help me with that.

Before casting nasturtiums around, check that smartmontools were 
installed and running on the other systems.

It might just be a matter of timing, one second all is well and the 
next, the disk detects a problem. The disk may have been fine before this.

fwiw I have a disk that's been griping for a year or so, I really must 
do something about it. There are no errors in any files (I can read them 
okay), but I cannot read all the disk.

I have in mind cloning it, then writing zeros over the entire surface. 
That, in theory, causes the disk's firmware to assign alternate 
tracks/sectors or whatever happens in modern disks, and life goes on. It 
seems to have worked on the one disk I've done it on.

At work, we have a disk that goes <click> <click> <click> <click> 
<click> <click> <click> .... I don't think it will work on that one.

[Antonio Olivares]

--- On Mon, 4/27/09, Matthias Clasen  wrote:
> From: Matthias Clasen 
> Subject: Re: One or more disks are failing
> To: "For testers of Fedora Core development releases" 
> Cc: [e-mail]
> Date: Monday, April 27, 2009, 4:43 PM
> On Tue, 2009-04-28 at 00:42 +0200, Antonio M wrote:
> > 2009/4/28 Antonio Olivares
>
> :
> > > Dear folks,
> > >
> > > This little program is getting to be annoying :(,
> > >
> > > Disk Notifications
> > > /usr/libexec/gdu-notification-daemon --delay
> > > Provides notifications related to disks
> > >
> > > I have removed it, at least from Starting up. It
>
> tells me "One or more disks are failing", My
> machine has a new disk, it has just been built. The disk is
> new, what is happening?  It tells me this on two of my
> machines.
> > > smolt profile:
>
> http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pub_3cbd7490-9741-46ec-8513-d22674a7fa0a
> (public)
> > > In case it is relevant to my question/rant/
>
> If you file a bug, you will be asked to provide data
> that'll allow David
> and Lennart to weed out these false positives. Thanks,
>
> Matthias

Matthias,

I have filed a bug, hesistant at first to report it. I have found two workarounds to avoid seeing the message ``One or more disks are failing''
1) run KDE
2) disable it from starting up in the session manager :)

BUG is here:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=498115

I will see if I can supply developers with information.  See below NOTE with***

***NOTE*** I might not be able to respond quickly to mails suggesting more info.  My rawhide machines are at school and they might close due to the SWINE FLU. Upon further notice. A double WHAMMY since we are also administering STATEWIDE TAKS EXAMS. Thank you for your consideration.

Regards,

Antonio

[John Summerfield]

> I have filed a bug, hesistant at first to report it. I have found two workarounds to avoid seeing the message ``One or more disks are failing''
> run KDE
> disable it from starting up in the session manager :)

Just don a blindfold.