This page last modified: Jan 02 2008
keywords:hard,disk,drive,western,digital,raptor,temperature,smart,smartd,config,log,error,warning, description:Remove extra, false log messages created by smartd. title:Logging hints for SMART and smartd If the output from smartctl shows no errors or warnings, and yet you have "Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius" warnings in your log file, then this hint may apply to you. Warning: this information may not be correct. However, since there is little in the way of useful recommendations about many log file entries for "Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius", I'll present what I've been able to find. Based on my Google searches, this is a common question "Why are there extra Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius entries in my log file?" but there are no clear, informative, definitive answers (except for the cases there someone has a failing hard drive). If you have any other types of warnings or errors from smartctl, then your hard drive may be failing. This hint does not apply to failing hard drive, or hard drives with problems or errors. The following is a sample from /var/log/messages on a Fedora (Linux) system. As far as I can tell, the temperature of the hard disk is 35 or 36 degrees celsius. Here is the useful section from smartctl: ... SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0007 167 167 021 Pre-fail Always - 2683 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 040 Old_age Always - 8 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000a 200 200 051 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 085 085 000 Old_age Always - 11175 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0012 100 253 051 Old_age Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0012 100 253 051 Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 8 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 107 104 000 Old_age Always - 36 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0012 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x000a 200 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 051 Old_age Offline - 0 ... Note that for attribute 194 the RAW_VALE is 36 which seems about right based on me touching the hard drive with my finger. (Yes, I was careful, and let my finger "hover" over the drive. Besides, I there was no indication that the actual drive temperature was greater than 100 degrees C.) From what I can tell, I get entries in my logs due to lacking a "-R 194" in /etc/smartd.conf. Smartd monitors the VALUE and WORST columns instead of RAW_VALUE and logs those columns as warnings. I've looked at both of my drives, and the RAW_VALUE is almost certainly the correct value. The drives are warm to the touch, and do not burn my fingers. A temperature of 102 degrees celsius is above the boiling point of water and would instantly cause a burn if you touched the drive with a bare finger. The solution is to change the drive specifier lines in /etc/smartd.conf. I got this hint from a web page and from the man page "man smartd.conf". The appropriate lines from my /ect/smartd.conf read: /dev/hda -a -R 194 /dev/sda -a -d ata -R 194 It will be several days before I can verify that the log messages stop. There seems to be no correlation between when the messages occur and system load. This is a more or less typical example of entries in /var/log/messages and I consider all these messages to be incorrect (there should be no warnings, and no log messages from smartd). Jan 1 00:29:35 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 107 to 108 Jan 1 00:59:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 102 to 99 Jan 1 00:59:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 108 to 107 Jan 1 01:29:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 99 to 102 Jan 1 01:29:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 107 to 108 Jan 1 01:59:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 102 to 99 Jan 1 02:29:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 99 to 102 Jan 1 02:29:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 108 to 106 Jan 1 03:29:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 102 to 104 Jan 1 03:29:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 106 to 110 Jan 1 04:29:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 104 to 99 Jan 1 04:29:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 110 to 108 Jan 1 04:59:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 99 to 102 Jan 1 05:29:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 108 to 107 Jan 1 05:59:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 107 to 108 Jan 1 07:59:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 108 to 106 Jan 1 08:29:35 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 106 to 108 Jan 1 08:59:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 108 to 107 Jan 1 09:29:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 107 to 108 Jan 1 10:59:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 108 to 107 Jan 1 11:59:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 107 to 108 Jan 1 12:59:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 108 to 107 Jan 1 13:59:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 107 to 108 Jan 1 14:29:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 108 to 107 Jan 1 15:59:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 107 to 108 Jan 1 16:29:35 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 108 to 107 Jan 1 16:59:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 107 to 106 Jan 1 17:29:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 106 to 107 Jan 1 18:29:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 107 to 108 Jan 1 20:29:30 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 108 to 107 Jan 1 21:59:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 102 to 103 Jan 1 21:59:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 107 to 108 Jan 1 22:29:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/hda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 103 to 102 Jan 1 23:29:29 tull smartd[2699]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 108 to 107