Announcement: smartmontools-win 7.0 branch

[deajan]

As said in the main announcement, I am currently developping a new GUI that works with the incredible PySimpleGUI framework.
My plan is to release a wx version which can be packaged lighter than a Tcl/Tk version.

Also, next version won't rely on gzip.exe, mailsend.exe or erroraction.cmd.

So far, the GUI is designed and works well with smartd.conf files.
Mail sending works too and is now integrated in the GUI app.

I have done some work on the Nuitka compiler in order to achieve smaller distribution files recently.

so far, the new GUI:

Open to suggestions.

[deajan]

Long time no see... Project didn't get the love it deserved, but I improved a lot on Python in the last couple of months for some other projets.

Back to smartmontools-win:
GUI is done, new config file encryption is done (to keep mailer secrets), full nuitka support is done.
Currently implementing internal mailer to get rid of cmd script.
These changes shall also make smartmontoools-win GUI compatible with other OSes, even if the main target of this packager will remain Windows.

Looking forward to release soon.

[deajan]

Latest code for the GUI can be found at https://github.com/deajan/smartd_pyngui

[irstmon]

Maybe it would be possible to re-include the option to send an email after the installation of the package? I'm currently missing this in 6.6-1 using smartmontools-win-6.6-1.exe /COMPONENTS="core\service,core\service\gui,core\service\mailsupport,updatedb,regext,authorlinks,statistics" /SUPPRESSMSGBOXES /VERYSILENT.

Using 6.4-4 with:
--short=S/../.././13 --long=L/../../7/11 -f smartmon@box.local -t hdd@box.local -s 192.168.4.1 /verysilent

there was an email that smartmontools has been installed. Would love to have that come back!

[deajan]

Okay, got this ;)

[deajan]

So far so good, developpment of smartd_pyngui is going on quite fast now.
What I've learned in the past weeks is that I should have begun from a scratch, instead of making my elder python code evolve, since I've learned alot of Python in the meantime, and my old code is quite ugly.
Most parts of the functionnality in the GUI is done, mailing is done, password encryption is also done.
I now have to test that code, then have it packaged toghether with smartmontools-win and make inno setup evolve again.

I first aimed for a March release, but since I decided to make a fusion of both smartd & alert config windows, have the code run on both Windows & Linux (the smartd_pyngui part at least), I now aim for June. Sorry for the long waiting.
Next releases will be done really fast and I hope to follow upstream closely, since I won't reinvent the wheel next times.

@irstmon I've implemented an install time sent message that can be triggered directly from the installer as it was possible before. I'll ping you once I'll have beta / RC packages ready.

[deajan]

Quick screenshot of the current dev, including the alert config window:

[deajan]

Just revamped automatic tests to include nuitka compilation.
Mailer has been fixed on linux, multiple UI enhancements are done.
Almost all core functionnality is there now, aiming platform tests now.

[irstmon]

Hi,

I've been using smartmontools-win for a while on different computers, however with new nvme devices smartmontools-win errors are triggered quite often. I'm using smartmontool 7.0 (switched binaries inside the smartmontools-win installation) and noticed 2 things:

• temperature warnings are a bit problematic since NVME devices tend to get hot quite easy and start throtteling. This is not a big problem since ignoring temperature (or adjusting the thresholds) is a way to deal with this. It's a bit problematic when watching "normal" HDDs, too. Since these don't get so hot there won't be an alarm for them.

• The bigger problem seems to be the ATA error reporting. I've disabled it now since it seems my NVME devices trigger an NVME error log entry in a while - most likely thermo throtteling event. As I couldn't find a way to get the "human readable" way of the NVME error log I'm not able to verify that. I've disable it too - which means that normal SATA SSD/HDDs won't report when the ATA error counter increases.

As stated above - these are smartmon "problems" and i know that. However maybe there should be a way to configure NVME warnings different?

[deajan]

Thinking of this, I could come up with the following solution:

• Autodetect drives as spinning, SSD or NVME (by default, let's play safe and assume a non identifiable disk is a spinning one)
• Have different presets depending on the drive type detected

This would indeed make the configuration a bit more bulky (one tab for spinning disks, another tab for ssd and another tab for NVME disks).

Of course I'd need to caliber proper default values for each kind of disk.
Would that fit your needs ?

[deajan]

This may also possibly fix #15

[irstmon]

Different settings for different disks seems like a good Idea.

I'm stating some thresholds that i got for different drives:

Spinning: ATA Error reporting yes, Temperature ?/45/55
SATA SSD: ATA Error reporting yes, Temperature ?/60/70
NVME: ATA Error reporting no (as it seems thermo throtteling is reported as an error), Temperature is a bit tricky, I don't know what to choose for difference since this can easily be 50°C... But Warn/Crit should be like 80°C or 81°C - I'll have to try it after my vacation.

[deajan]

I've commited some early work to support multiple disks settings depending on disk types.
@irstmon Let me know if this makes sense to you.

[irstmon]

Seems like a good solution - if people want just one setting the checkbox is a good way!

[deajan]

Announcement: I've added the smartd config utility (smartd_pyngui) to codacy tests month.
When the code was first analyzed, it had 37 issues. In the last two weeks, I rewrote part of the code (best practices since I already use a linter).
The issues have fallen down to only 8, of which some won't be fixed since they are design choices.
Anyway, I'm happy to announce that the code quality measured by codacy is grade A.

I still have some work todo, and also am adding multiple disk profiles, which takes time (see comments above).

I prefer making one solid release that takes time to build, but will be a base to follow upstream releases as closely as possible.

Anyway, things are going on well and I hope to release a beta soon.
I'd love to see some testers which subscribing to this thread in order to make the beta stage as short as possible.

[deajan]

@irstmon I've more or less finished the GUI parts that deal with multiple tabs.
I still have to code the generated lists to smartd.conf file and vice versa, but this shouldn't take ages.

Do you have any good realworld presets for the temperatures ? I'd love to compare with my presets here deajan/smartd_pyngui@330d82f

[irstmon]

Currently I'm using "DEVICESCAN -H -C 197+ -U 198+ -l selftest -t -f -I 194 -r 5! -R 5! -n sleep,7,q" because of the NVME errors.

Did some quick looks and found the following for the one Samsung NVME that's in the one Desktop bugging me:
Warn 69,9
Crit 72,9

The most SSD are nearly the same temperature range as far as I could see. However Temperatures on NVME seems to run quite a bit higher - throtteling Samsung 970 Pro seems to occur at 79°C, 970 Evo at 83°C. I think the temperature preset for spinning seems good, and even SATA SSDs seems fine.

Edit:
What will be the way to deploy the multiple settings? Currently I'm using the installer and a .conf file in the same dir to update my machines. However there are different disks in my workstation for example - will there be multiple lines in the conf file?

[deajan]

Yes, there will be multiple lines in the config file.
I've had a chat with Christian Franke from smartmontools, to find a way to apply profiles per disk type, but this is not supported as of vanilla smartmontools (https://listi.jpberlin.de/pipermail/smartmontools-support/2019-July/000336.html)

My point is to make a "static" link between detected disk types and configuration profiles.
Mass deployment shall then use preconfigured profiles, that will be applied once at install time per disk type.

[Neustradamus]

"2019-12-30: We released ​version 7.1 of Smartmontools":

• https://www.smartmontools.org/

[deajan]

@Neustradamus I honestly lost track of this project for a while now.
The code is almost done, new alert system works, almost the whole GUI works, but I really need time, which I don't have right now.
Is there any urgency ?

[deajan]

Released an interim build, verrryyyy lately, but, well... works.