Bug#1032469: smartmontools: startup takes too long for systemd

[Matthew Vernon]

Package: smartmontools
Version: 7.2-1
Severity: normal

Hi,

On some of our production servers with a lot of JBOD disks, smartd
takes so long to start up that systemd's default 90s timeout kicks in
and smartd gets killed. Example log extract:

Mar 07 14:15:10 ms-be2070 systemd[1]: Starting Self Monitoring and
Reporting Technology (SMART) Daemon...
[smartd starts monitoring disks]
Mar 07 14:16:40 ms-be2070 systemd[1]: smartmontools.service: start
operation timed out. Terminating.
Mar 07 14:16:40 ms-be2070 systemd[1]: smartmontools.service: Failed with
result 'timeout'.
Mar 07 14:16:40 ms-be2070 systemd[1]: Failed to start Self Monitoring
and Reporting Technology (SMART) Daemon.

I fixed this by adding a systemd override:
[Service]
TimeoutSec=300

And now all is good:

Mar 07 14:31:53 ms-be2070 systemd[1]: Starting Self Monitoring and
Reporting Technology (SMART) Daemon...
Mar 07 14:34:06 ms-be2070 systemd[1]: Started Self Monitoring and
Reporting Technology (SMART) Daemon.

Note the ~2 minute start time.

It seems to me that the default startup timeout ought to be long
enough to work "out of the box", so could the unit file we ship be
adjusted to set a sensible TimeoutSec value, please? 300s seems likely
to be enough.

Thanks,

Matthew

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.6
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500,
'stable-debug'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-21-amd64 (SMP w/48 CPU threads)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE
not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages smartmontools depends on:
ii debianutils 4.11.2
ii libc6 2.31-13+deb11u5
ii libcap-ng0 0.7.9-2.2+b1
ii libgcc-s1 10.2.1-6
ii libselinux1 3.1-3
ii libstdc++6 10.2.1-6
ii libsystemd0 247.3-7+deb11u1
ii lsb-base 11.1.0

smartmontools recommends no packages.

Versions of packages smartmontools suggests:
ii bsd-mailx [mailx] 8.1.2-0.20180807cvs-2
ii curl 7.74.0-1.3+deb11u7
ii gpg 2.2.27-2+deb11u2
pn gsmartcontrol <none>
pn smart-notifier <none>
ii wget 1.21-1+deb11u1

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/smartmontools/run.d/10mail [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
'/etc/smartmontools/run.d/10mail'

-- no debconf information

[Christian Franke]

A note for upcoming smartmontools release 7.4:

It NOTIFY_SOCKET is set in environment, smartd 7.4 will sd_notify
"EXTEND_TIMEOUT_USEC=20000000" for each disk during device registration
and then for each disk during first device checks.No such calls will
occur after "READY=1" has been notified.

Regards,

Christian
smartmontools.org