| SCN # | SCN-00000009 |
| Title of SCN | ‘Poll Error’ drive status |
| TRAC # | #15439 |
| Effective Version | 9.4 – 9.6 |
| Products Affected | Server |
| Reason for Change (Summary) | Eliminating false positive ‘Offline’ drive status in Linux |
Change
Because of the way Linux handles how processes can trigger other sub-processes, certain features would fail if the ‘core’ process was utilizing more than 50% of its available memory. In exacqVision 9.2 and earlier, ‘smartctl’ commands could be blocked resulting in the drive status ‘Offline’. This was misleading since the drive was not actually offline, rather, the status was unknown since the ‘smartctl’ command to get the status was blocked due to limited resources.
Beginning in 9.4, this scenario is detected and the drive status results in ‘Poll Error’. This status does not mean that a drive is failing, only that the status is unknown. Likely, the system is still able to write to the disk. It may be worth troubleshooting what is causing the high RAM usage.
As per SCN – 00000008 – Privileged exacqd process, these sub-processes are moving to ‘exacqd’ and will no longer be triggered by ‘core’. It is highly unlikely that ‘exacqd’ will ever be in a high RAM usage state. Therefore, the ‘Poll Error’ is expected to go away with exacqVision 9.8, when all sub-processes will be triggered by ‘exacqd’.
Additional Documentation
https://trac.exacq.com/DVR/wiki/ServerStorageConditions
Other Information
Logs may indicate any of the following:
SysMgmtPI Warning Self-test command failed: SysMgmtPI Warning Failed to start process /usr/local/exacq/server/smartctl –scan SysMgmtPI Warning Failed to scan disks with smartctl SysMgmtPI Verbose Disk /dev/sd? overall health assessment : |
The same cause which results in the false positive ‘Offline’ drive status (or ‘Poll Error’) could also result in any of the following sub-processes to fail as well:
| Feature | Windows Binaries | Linux Binaries |
|---|---|---|
| Network Configuration | netconfig.ps1 teaming.ps1 | netconfig.sh |
| Remote Updates | curl.exe update.ps1 | curl update.sh |
| Auto Export (to CD/DVD) | dvd+rw-mediainfo.exe wodim.exe | dvdrwtools wodim |
| Notifications (Email) | curl.exe | curl |
| Archiving/Extended | curl.exe | curl parted mount |
| DHCP Server | opendhcpserver.exe | opendhcpd dhcpconfig.sh |
| IP Camera Detection | mDNSResponder.exe | mdnsd |
| Extended Drives | iscsiprep.ps1 | iscsiprep.py mkbadst_config.sh |
| Disk Monitoring | evselftest.exe smartctl.exe | evselftest smartctl |
| Disk Prep | driveprep.ps1 | driveprep.sh rmfs.sh |
| Failover | failover.ps1 | failover.sh |
| Hardware Monitoring | sysinfo.ps1 | lshw |
| Time/Date/Timezone/NTP | tzutil.exe w32time | ntpd ntpdate |
| LDAP Queries | curl.exe | curl |
All sub-processes are expected to be moved to ‘exacqd’ in 9.8.