Hard disks are the most common system element to need to be replaced, and
are therefore a critical consideration in improving Reliability, Availability.
and Serviceability (RAS).
The tools in this project were designed to add to the Serviceability of
disk devices under Linux so that the system does not have to be rebooted or
taken out of service to perform common maintenance or service functions.
Devices handled by scsirastools include SCSI, Linux software RAID, SAS,
SATA, and USB storage devices (some via SCSI emulation).
Note that certain functions, like firmware updates and setting mode pages,
are available for SCSI/SAS devices but not for USB devices via SCSI
emulation.
This project includes changes that enhance the Reliability, Availability
and Serviceability (RAS) of the drivers and tools that are commonly used
in a Linux disk management and Linux RAID-1 configuration.
Linux Root Disk Mirroring (RAID-1) is the technique of using redundant disks to
record multiple copies of the data so that a failure of one disk does not cause
data loss.
This does not necessarily address the needs of hardware RAID adapters.
The RAID adapter vendor should be the source of tools for that.
There are user-space and kernel level components to this project:
sgdiskmon - a tool to monitor SCSI disks for hot-insertion/removal/failure and perform notification (LEDs, SNMP).
sgraidmon - a tool to monitor software RAID disks for hot-insertion/removal; Note that this uses raidtools like mdadm to re-configure the new disk.
sgdefects - a tool to read the primary and grown defect lists
sgdskfl - a tool to load disk firmware to SCSI disks under Linux;
you can get current firmware images from your disk vendor.
sgmode - a tool to get and set SCSI device mode pages;
some sample mode page definition files are included in the package
sgdiag - a tool to perform format and other diagnostic functions
Performance Co-Pilot
- a project used along with scsirastools to predict disk failures
based on trending of defects and scsi anomalies.
scsiras
- kernel patches to provide RAS enhancements to the software RAID-1 stack
History
This project started in August 2001 as part of the Carrier Grade Linux effort.
This code was first included in MontaVista CGE Linux 2.1 in July 2002.
The scsirastools functions were included in OSDL CGL 1.0 and 2.0 requirements.
The scsirastools rpm is also included in the SuSE SLES releases.
This a community-based effort to add to existing efforts to improve or
enhance the existing Software RAID-1 solution in Linux.
If you are interested in participating in or contributing to this project,
please send mail to the mailing list found
here