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How can I be notified immediately when a drive on my Linux server fails?

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Last Updated: May 23, 2014 1:05 PM

You can configure RAID to notify you immediately when a there is a problem with a drive on your Linux dedicated server. How you do this depends on which RAID driver your server has.

To Determine Your Server's RAID Driver

  1. Connect to your Linux dedicated server using SSH.
  2. Use the following command:
    lspci

The command returns one of the following:

  • Highpoint returns 07:04.0 SCSI storage controller: HighPoint Technologies, Inc. RocketRAID 1720 (2x SATA II RAID Controller) (rev 02).

    NOTE: Older Highpoint drivers return a similar value.

  • IMSM (Intel Matrix Storage Manager) returns 00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801 SATA Controller [RAID mode] (rev 05).

NOTE: RAID automatically sends server notifications to our Dedicated Hosting support team. We recommend that you continue to use this configuration and simply add yourself to the notification list. Any other changes to your RAID configuration could result in a hard drive failure going undetected.

Highpoints

To Add Your Email to the RAID Notification List

  1. Connect to your Linux dedicated server using SSH.
  2. From the command prompt, type su.
  3. Enter the password you created when you set up your dedicated server.
  4. At the command prompt, type:
    hptraidconf
  5. For your user name, type RAID. For your password, type hpt.
  6. From the Highpoint CLI prompt, type:
    7. mail recipient add name email@coolexample.com options

    Where "name" is your name, "email@coolexample.com" is your email address, and "options" are either "Inf" (Information), "War" (Warning), or "Err" (Error) — depending on the type of problems you want to be notified about.

  7. To confirm that you were added to the notification list, type:
    8. mail recipient

Your name and email address should display in the mail recipient list along with the name and email address for your dedicated support team. If you have any problems adding yourself to your RAID notification list, please contact Customer Support.

IMSM

To Add Your Email to the RAID Notification List

  1. Connect to your Linux dedicated server using SSH.
  2. Use su to become the root user.
  3. Modify the MAILADDR line of the /etc/mdam.conf file to contain your email address. Alternatively, use the following command:
    sed -ie 's/^MAILADDR.*/MAILADDR myemailaddress@coolexample.com/' /etc/mdadm.conf
    Where myemailaddress@coolexample.com is your email address.

You can verify the edit by using grep to search /etc/mdam.conf for MAILADDR:

grep MAILADDR /etc/mdadm.conf

If the change did not successfully save, it returns the following:

MAILADDR root

If the change did successfully save, it returns the following:

MAILADDR myemailaddress@coolexample.com