smartctl/smartd sometimes fail when talking to a busy SAS drive as a result of a temporary error. I'm not sure whether the retry should be happening in the kernel or in the SMART library, hence I'm filing this as a kernel bug. smartctl error report looks like this: smartctl 5.42 2011-10-20 r3458 [FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE amd64] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Vendor: SEAGATE Product: ST32000444SS Revision: 0006 User Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 bytes [2.00 TB] Logical block size: 512 bytes (pass8:mps0:0:21:0): MODE SENSE(6). CDB: 1a 0 1c 0 40 0 (pass8:mps0:0:21:0): CAM status: Unconditionally Re-queue Request >> Terminate command early due to bad response to IEC mode page A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options. Fix: Either the kernel should retry the request, or smartctl/smartd should. If the view of the SAS experts is that the application should respond appropriately, I'll file a bug against smartmontools. How-To-Repeat: Try to run "smartctl -a" or smartd on a really busy SAS drive connected to a SAS port expander connected to a 16-port LSI eSAS HBA. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails.
For bugs matching the following criteria: Status: In Progress Changed: (is less than) 2014-06-01 Reset to default assignee and clear in-progress tags. Mail being skipped