I can not start smartd on my machine (SUSE SLES12-SP3)

[Nguyen Phuong]

Hello support team,

I had install suse linux enterprise on my machine, however smartd not running.
Status:

 ● smartd.service - Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (SMART) Daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/smartd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)
Condition: start condition failed at Wed 2019-06-26 09:12:13 +07; 1h 26min ago
           ConditionVirtualization=false was not met
     Docs: man:smartd(8)
           man:smartd.conf(5)

So, what can i do to fix this? Please tell me.
Thank,

[Christian Franke]

Please provide more details:

• smartd version (e.g. first line of smartd -V output) ?
• Do you use a official smartmontools package from some repository? If yes, which package version from which repository?
• Provide contents of /usr/lib/systemd/system/smartd.service file (use attachment or wiki markup for preformatted text).
• Is my machine actually a virtual machine? If yes, the package maintainer may have decided to block smartd start with a setting in the ​systemd service file. See also the FAQ.

[Nguyen Phuong]

Replying to Christian Franke:
Hi I provide details as follows:

• smartd version (e.g. first line of smartd -V output) ?

smartd -V
smartd 6.2 2013-11-07 r3856 [x86_64-linux-4.4.73-5-default] (SUSE RPM)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

• Do you use a official smartmontools package from some repository? If yes, which package version from which repository?

Information for package smartmontools:
--------------------------------------
Repository     : SLES12-SP3-12.3-0
Name           : smartmontools
Version        : 6.2-4.33
Arch           : x86_64
Vendor         : SUSE LLC <https://www.suse.com/>
Support Level  : Level 3
Installed Size : 1.6 MiB
Installed      : Yes (automatically)
Status         : up-to-date
Source package : smartmontools-6.2-4.33.src
Summary        : Monitor for SMART devices

• Provide contents of /usr/lib/systemd/system/smartd.service file (use attachment or wiki markup for preformatted text).

[Unit]
Description=Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (SMART) Daemon
After=syslog.target
ConditionVirtualization=false

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=-/var/lib/smartmontools/smartd_opts
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/smartd -n $smartd_opts
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
StandardOutput=syslog

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

• Is my machine actually a virtual machine? If yes, the package maintainer may have decided to block smartd start with a setting in the ​systemd service file. See also the FAQ.

No, my host machine, not a virtual machine.

Please tell me where was i wrong :(

[Christian Franke]

This systemd message:

Condition: start condition failed at Wed 2019-06-26 09:12:13 +07; 1h 26min ago
           ConditionVirtualization=false was not met

suggests that this line of /usr/lib/systemd/system/smartd.service is bogus:

ConditionVirtualization=false

I guess that false shall be replaced by none because the related tool ​systemd-detect-virt outputs none if no VM is present.

No ConditionVirtualization setting is present in the upstream version of smartd.service​. We don't provide packages for Linux distros. Therefore you need to ask the maintainer of this SUSE package to fix this.

Workaround: Install a fixed version of smartd.service to the directory for local system services.

[Christian Franke]

There is a bogus setting in the distribution specific systemd service file for smartd. The bug is not present in the upstream source code. Only the package maintainer can fix this.

[Christian Franke]

I guess that false shall be replaced by none because the related tool ​systemd-detect-virt outputs none if no VM is present.

This guess was wrong. A test on Debian shows that ConditionVirtualization=false is actually the correct setting to limit smartd to non-VM environments. Using none does not work.

So there might be a bogus VM detection on your machine. Does systemd-detect-virt print none or something else?

Removing the ConditionVirtualization=false setting should fix the problem and shouldn't break anything else.