[Swlug] Mysterious errors

[Daniel Morris]

smartctl is usually restricted to a superuser, perhaps you need to try
via sudo on Mint?

Here's openSUSE Leap refusing me to let me peep as a regular user:

[chunk:danielm]$ /usr/sbin/smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl 7.2 2021-09-14 r5237
[x86_64-linux-5.14.21-150500.55.39-default] (SUSE RPM)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

Smartctl open device: /dev/sda failed: Permission denied

That response gives a bit more of a clue. "No such device" could be
permissions, but is more likely that the device name is different. Try
'lsblk' for a pretty tree of the devices first, which should work fine
as a regular user.

Per 'man smartctl', the device does need to have SMART capabilities,
but I thought it threw a more informative informational if it couldn't
find the device in the database - and manufacturers have been readily
supplying identifiers well before
the IDE to SATA transition.

 Daniel


On Sat, 6 Jan 2024 at 14:53, Rhys Sage via Swlug
<swlug at mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:
>
> smartctl /dev/sda -a
> smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [x86_64-linux-5.4.0-169-generic] (local build)
> Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
>
> Smartctl open device: /dev/sda failed: No such device
> rhys at Apollo:~$
>
> That was interesting! I'm pretty sure if that was true, I would not be able to use my laptop. BTW this is a stock Asus E203MA. Looking up the photo I took of it when I bought it, I seem to have bought it in February of 2016. I suppose after almost 8 years of daily use, it might be coming to its end. My Macbook lasted about 7 years before the graphics card and HDD both failed. Same kind of daily usage. Big cost difference $200 vs $1,000.
>
> Rhys Sage
>
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