[smartmontools-support] Getting a human-readable overview on the console

[R. Diez]

Hi all:

First of all, many thanks for Smartmontools.

I have always found the S.M.A.R.T. metrics hard to understand. I have too many PCs anyway to manually check the values.

Therefore, I normally use the GSmartControl GUI: I open the disk and switch to the "Statistics" tab. If something is wrong, then the metric is displayed with a red background. This way, I know that the disk needs attention.

I recently got a Prometheus alarm from a server about some SMART health problems. Unfortunately, I cannot use a GUI with this PC. I tried a remote X2Go desktop (which is not always available on servers), but the switch to elevated privileges (GSmartControl needs root access) does not work. So the only thing left is the text console over SSH.

Is there a way to get a human-readable overview of the S.M.A.R.T. health on a text console? Ideally, command "sudo smartctl /dev/sda -a" should display an extra table column labelled "status" with an indicator like "OK/warning/error".

As a bonus, a table footer like "error count: 2, warning count: 3" would allow me to quickly decide whether a disk needs attention or not.

Thanks in advance,
   rdiez