[smartmontools-support] Inquiry: How to reliably get a SMART hard disk failure warning in a GUI system like MacOSX

[Stefan N. <p....@gm...>]

Hello SmartMonTool People!

TARGET AUDIENCE:

Those with Macintosh/Darwin knowledge.

PREWORD:

First I'd like to mention, that I extensively looked through the FAQ,  
searched through the mailinglist archive, and did not find anything  
related to my inquiry. Hence I decided to ask here.
Please CC me in your answers, as I am not subscribed, and possibly  
integrate the answer to the inquiry to the manpage and respectively  
the online documentation, so that other MacOSX users also benefit  
from this.
I offer to summarize that information, and possibly also put it to  
Mac-relevant pages (i.e macosxhints.com).
Thanks for help already in advance!

QUESTION:

How do I have to setup my computer-environment, that I reliably get a  
warning, as soon as SMART detects a problem?
Assumed that I am working in an OS which directly boots into a GUI,  
not showing me any CLI warnings while booting, and later on also  
works in a GUI. What's necessary that the warning _reliably_ comes to  
me as the MacOSX GUI user?
Please also tell me the optimal polling, testing, etc settings, and  
why the default logpath is /var/run/smartd.pid rather than /var/log/ 
smartd.pid

ENVIRONMENT:

I have installed smartmontools via the MacPorts.org paket manager,  
and I am using version 5.38 on MacOSX 10.4.11

ASSUMPTIONS / IDEAS:

I saw that the installation routine created: /Library/StartupItems/SMART

I read the manpage for smartd, and saw that it either can send a  
message to SYSLOG or to the system MAIL daemon, but no option to  
simply execute a command, i.e. a GUI-based notification service.

My idea on OSX would be to pass the message over to growl (a  
notification service) or an applescript, and that this really causes  
a floating window, which I reliable get to see, so that I cannot miss  
that information.

## Growl Notification
smartd message output | growlnotify --sticky --priority 10 --message -

## Apple Script Notification
smartd message output | osascript ~/bin/warning.scpt

## Content of warning.scpt
... Code which display a floating window with the error message ...

Or shall I simply use something like:
http://www.corecode.at/smartreporter/
which I guess is similar like:
smartctl -H disk0

Shall I use both smartd and smartreporter, how do I correctly set  
them up to co-operate, or better only one? Pros/cons?


Regards,

Stefan Nowak, Vienna/Austria