inventory-smartctl

Inventory module for collecting SMART drive health, temperature, and wear data via smartctl.

Description

This module collects S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) data from storage devices and exposes it as inventory attributes in CFEngine Mission Portal. It provides a rolled-up status for fleet-wide filtering (OK, DEGRADED, SMARTCTL_MISSING) along with per-drive health, temperature, power-on hours, and NVMe-specific metrics.

SMART data helps predict drive failures before they occur and provides visibility into storage device health across your infrastructure.

Requirements

• Platform: Linux only (currently)
• Binary: smartctl from smartmontools package (version 7.0+ for JSON support)
• Permissions: Requires root to read SMART data from devices

Installation

Add to your policy via cfbs:

cfbs add inventory-smartctl
cfbs install

Or include directly in your policy:

bundle agent main
{
  methods:
      "smartctl" usebundle => inventory_smartctl:main;
}

Inventory Attributes

The following attributes are exposed in Mission Portal:

Overall Status

• SMART status - Rolled-up health across all drives
  • Values: OK, DEGRADED, SMARTCTL_MISSING
  • OK: All detected drives report PASSED
  • DEGRADED: One or more drives report FAILED
  • SMARTCTL_MISSING: smartctl is not installed on the system
  • Use for fleet-wide filtering and alerting in Mission Portal

Per-Drive Attributes (all drive types)

• SMART drive health - Per-drive health status

  • Values: PASSED, FAILED
  • Example: /dev/sda: PASSED, /dev/nvme0: FAILED
  • A FAILED status indicates the drive is predicting imminent failure

• SMART drive model - Drive model identifier

  • Example: /dev/sda: Samsung SSD 870 EVO

• SMART drive temperatures (C) - Current temperature in Celsius

  • Example: /dev/sda: 35 C
  • Note: Not available for virtual disks

• SMART drive power-on hours - Cumulative runtime in hours

  • Example: /dev/sda: 8742 h
  • Useful for tracking drive age and warranty coverage

NVMe-Specific Attributes

• SMART NVMe available spare - Remaining spare blocks (%)

  • Example: /dev/nvme0: 100%
  • Low values (<10%) indicate wear approaching end of life

• SMART NVMe percentage used - Drive life consumed (%)

  • Example: /dev/nvme0: 5%
  • Based on manufacturer’s endurance rating

• SMART NVMe media errors - Uncorrectable media errors count

  • Example: /dev/nvme0: 0
  • Any non-zero value indicates data integrity issues

Alert Attributes

• SMART failed drives - List of drives with FAILED health status
  • Only present when one or more drives are failing
  • Use for alerting and automated response

Troubleshooting

SMART status shows SMARTCTL_MISSING

The SMART status attribute reports SMARTCTL_MISSING when smartctl is not installed. To resolve:

Install smartmontools package:

# Debian/Ubuntu
apt-get install smartmontools

# RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
yum install smartmontools

# SUSE
zypper install smartmontools

Verify installation:

command -v smartctl
smartctl --version

No inventory data appears

If smartctl is installed but no data appears:

Check if drives are detected:

smartctl --scan

Check cache files:

ls -lh /var/cfengine/state/inventory_smartctl_*.json

Run with verbose mode:

cf-agent -Kvf ./policy.cf

See Also

• CFEngine inventory tutorial
• CFEngine Masterfiles inventory policy
• smartmontools documentation