Hardware monitoring

Hardware monitoring

Basically, we're going to use smartmontools and let it send via gmail smtp (if you don't have gmail… make a free account).

Sources: https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/monitoring-hard-disk-health-with-smartd-under-linux-or-unix-operating-systems.html  and https://gist.github.com/maleadt/02a58eb46118c1d8014c and https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-configure-smartd-and-be-notified-of-hard-disk-problems-via-email and https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=50939 

1. sudo apt-get install smartmontools mailutils msmpt msmtp-mta 

2. Create msmtp config

   1. sudo touch /etc/msmtprc # create global config
sudo chmod 660 /etc/msmtprc # make it accessible. the guide says 664, but this would be a security breach
   2. Create an app-specific password for your gmail https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords 
      and use it in the next step
   3. In sudo vim /etc/msmtprc paste (and insert APP_PASSWORD_WITHOUT_SPACES)

   defaults
   auth on
   tls  on
   tls_trust_file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
   logfile /var/log/msmtp.log
   
   # Gmail configuration
   account gmail
   host    smtp.gmail.com
   port    587
   from    me@example.com
   user    me@example.com
   password APP_PASSWORD_WITHOUT_SPACES 
   
   account default: gmail

3. Enable logging:
   sudo touch /var/log/msmtp.log
sudo chmod 666 /var/log/msmtp.log # there seems to be an issue with msmtp and it won't log unless all users have access. This is relatively harmless.
4. Check if SMART support is available
   sudo smartctl -i /dev/sda (or whatever your device identifier is)
5. Open sudo vim /etc/default/smartmontools and modify/uncomment the following line:
   enable_smart="/dev/sda"

6. In sudo vim /etc/smartd.conf comment out the line with DEVICESCAN and add the following lines:
   (remove the last line after successful test. run sudo systemctl restart smartd to re-run the test)

   # MY SETTINGS
   # check some stuff and track everything (-a), with a Short (-s S) and Long (-s L) test every week and month, respectively.
   # ignore temperature (194 and 231) and power-on hours (9) attributes (-I)
   # email (-m) once (-M) if warnings
   /dev/sda -a -I 194 -I 9 -I 231 -m me@example.com -M once -s (S/../../6/00)|(L/../01/./01) # every saturday midnight | every 1st day of the month 1AM
   /dev/sda -a -M test -m me@example.com  # remove this line after successful test

7. sudo systemctl reload smartd to reload the config (which also executes the test line)

Congrats! You're done!