When you deploy a Promise Pegasus2, you want to run regular disk health checks and send an email notification if there’s a problem. The Promise Utility app can theoretically do this* when there’s someone logged in at the console, but we’re rarely running these in environments where there’s anyone logged at the console.

The solution is to script a check of the disks using the promiseutil command line utility and then create a cronjob to run it at regular intervals.

Here’s an example disk check that parses the output of phydrv, logs each run to system.log and can optionally send email if a problem is found.

#!/bin/bash # # promise_disk_check.sh # # Checks the phydrv status of a Promise Pegasus, logs and mails the output if there's an issue. # # Author: A @ Modest Industries # Last update: 2014-07-19 # 2014-07-19 - tweaked grep to allow for Media Patrol # # Works with Promise Utility for Pegasus2 v3.18.0000.18 (http://www.promise.com) # Requires sendemail for email alerts (http://caspian.dotconf.net/menu/Software/SendEmail/) export DATESTAMP=`date +%Y-%m-%d\ %H:%M:%S` # Editable variables # Path to sendemail sendemail_path="/Library/Scripts/Monitoring/sendemail" # Email alert? send_email_alert=true # Variables for sendemail # Sender's address alert_sender="[email protected]" # Recipient's addresses, comma separated. #alert_recipient='[email protected], [email protected]' alert_recipient="[email protected]" # SMTP server to send the messages through # alert_smtp_server="smtp.example.com:port" alert_smtp_server="smtp.example.com" # Subject line of the alert. alert_subject="Alert: Promise disk problem detected on $HOSTNAME." # Header line at the top of the alert message alert_header="At $DATESTAMP, a problem was detected on this device:

" # Pass / Fail messages pass_msg="Promise disk check successful." fail_msg=" *** Promise disk check FAILED!!! ***" # ------------ Do not edit below this line ------------------ # Variables pass=true results="" # Create temp files unit_ID_tmp=`mktemp "/tmp/$$_ID.XXXX"` results_tmp=`mktemp "/tmp/$$_results.XXXX"` # Get header information for this Promise unit. Includes workaround for promiseutil tty issue. screen -D -m sh -c "promiseutil -C subsys -v >$tmpdir$unit_ID_tmp" unit_ID=$(<$tmpdir$unit_ID_tmp) # Get status of the disks. Includes workaround for promiseutil tty issue. screen -D -m sh -c "promiseutil -C phydrv >$tmpdir$results_tmp" # Check each line of the output the test results. while read -r line do if grep '^[0-9]' <<< "$line" | grep -Eqv 'OK|Media' then results=$results"BAD DRIVE DETECTED: $line



" pass=false fi done < $tmpdir$results_tmp # Log the results, conditionally send email on failure. if [ "$pass" = false ] ; then results="$alert_header$unit_ID



$results

$alert_footer" echo "$DATESTAMP: $fail_msg



$results" >> /var/log/system.log if [ "$send_email_alert" = true ] ; then "$sendemail_path" -f $alert_sen:der -t $alert_recipient -u $alert_subject -m "$results" -s $alert_smtp_server fi else echo "$DATESTAMP: $pass_msg" >> /var/log/system.log fi # Cleanup rm -f $tmpdir$unit_ID_tmp $tmpdir$results_tmp

Note that the script uses sendemail for sending mail, a very useful little drop in for when the local machine isn’t running mail services.

*I say “theoretically” because configuring email in the Promise Utility is a mess and I’ve yet to see a single successful notification after configuring it.

2014-05-04 – Updated to make the path to sendemail a variable.

2014-07-19 – Changed grep to handle false positive during Media Patrol runs

