[smartmontools-support] no further selftests when a former test hangs

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

Hi,

I have troubles with an apparently broken Samsung firmware
(it's a Pata SAMSUNG SP2514N disk).
Long self tests don't finish, they are stuck with 00% remaining.

My self test log looks like this therefore:
# 1  Short offline       Completed without error       00%      2552         -
# 2  Extended offline    Self-test routine in progress 00%      2222         -
# 3  Extended offline    Self-test routine in progress 00%      1955         -
# 4  Short offline       Completed without error       00%      1810         -

Interestingly, the first 2 Extended offline tests on this quite new disk 
were completing, the third and all consecutive tests are stuck. 
Googling the web, I could not find similar problems: Has anybody
a clue what's going on with my disk?

As a consequence, smartd does not schedule new tests, I get 
"skip scheduled ... Test" messages in my syslog. This is quite
unfortunate.

In smartd.c, I see
  // If currently running a self-test, do not interrupt it to start another.
  if (15==(data.self_test_exec_status >> 4)) {
    PrintOut(LOG_INFO, "Device: %s, skip scheduled %sTest; %1d0%% remaining of current Self-Test.\n",
             name, testname, (int)(data.self_test_exec_status & 0x0f));
    return 1;
  }

So there seems to be no possibility to force tests in smartd.
With smartctl it's no problem to issue new tests, and "-t offline"
and "-t short" work as they should.

Of course, I can simply hack smartd.c and modify this check to allow
00% cases, but I thought I better ask the list first. 

And, by the way, it's not possible to abort this hanging test with
"smartctl -X", this has no effect. Apart from this, the disk looks
sane.


thanks,
Manfred
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