Re: [smartmontools-support] [patch] OCZ Vertex and Agility support

[Manfred S. <man...@gm...>]

Hi Macin!

First, thanks a lot for your contribution!


> Dear smartmontools developers,
> 
> I have tried to send this patch to the developers mailing list, but
> since the archives are closed to the general public, I don't even know
> if my message was successful. 

Yes, the archive is subscribers-only.
The development list is moderated for non-subscribers.
This means, your email needs approval from the list manager
to make it to the list.
You could have found out yourself by reading
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/smartmontools-devel


> Of course I tried to join the developers
> mailing list, but no confirmation request has ever arrived in my
> mailbox. 

Why did you want to join?
You can contribute to smartmontools without being a developer,
simply by posting suggestions, information or patches. 
In any case, your contributions will be properly acknowledged 
in the changelogs.

> Neither my selected email and password seem to work for the
> archives.
> 

Yes, that's expected.

> I also tried just to directly commit my changes into the SVN as
> suggested on the Wiki (in general guidelines for the developers), but
> obviously I need a username and password. 

You really expected to be able to commit directly to the repository?
You are aware that smartctl and smartd are executed with root
privileges? People are expecting (rightly) that they don't get 
some random hacks, viruses and backdoors which compromise their system
if they download a SVN snapshot!

> I am usually a patient person,

Really?

> but there was recently some traffic in the SVN repository and most
> commits conflicted with my changes (I had to add a bunch of custom
> attributes). Therefore I should probably share my work before conflicts
> become annoying to resolve.
> 

Patch conflicts happen sometimes and are mostly easy to resolve.

Did you really expect to put in your first contribution ever without
any discussion or feedback?
If a patch needs some iterations, it is normal to get conflicts, you
have to live with that.

> General sourcecode documentation is suggesting to contact this list with
> development problems, so excuse me if I am making a mistake sending this
> message to the support list, but I find it a bit tricky to join
> smartmontools development ;-)
> 

Yes that's OK, smartmontools-support is OK unless you want to 
discuss things in private (e.g. because of some NDA's with vendors), 
then smartmontools-devel would be more appropriate 
(but then you would have to accept some delay because of list moderation).


> Now to the point: I attach a patch against the current SVN head
> (revision 2970). It adds support for OCZ SSD disks which make a heavy
> use of custom SMART attributes.
> 

Please step back one meter and look at your code.
It's a mess, isn't it?
This is not your fault, you did it the right way to have a
simple, working patch. But this means we first have to discuss
how to work on the infrastructure, so things stay simple, readable
and maintainable. 

 
> The code is based on the discussions with OCZ employees from the
> official OCZ forum (http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/) and also on
> Transcend SSD documentation.
> 

We would like to know more about this! Do you have some documentation
you can share? On what specification exactly is your patch based?

Especially about this 64bit thing we need to know more.
If I understand this correctly, this grossly violates the ATA standard?

We have to discuss therefore if we really want to support some
arbitrary vendor formats at all ...


Cheers,
Manfred


> Apparently CrystalDiskInfo developers used the same Transcend
> documentation. Therefore the attributes are consistent with their tool,
> which is officially recommended by OCZ.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Marcin
> 

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