smart(8) Update – A permissively licensed alternative to smartctl(8) by Chuck Tuffli, Michael Dexter
Channel: EuroBSDcon
Date: 2021-09-27

The familiar smartctl(8) utility from the SmartMonTools package has helped operators access the S.M.A.R.T. storage device health diagnostics since its introduction in 199*. While smartctl(8) is proven, flexible, and widly-ported, it has long been limited in the machine-readability of its output, burdened by support for long-discontinued devices, and published under a license that precludes its inclusion in permissively-licensed operating systems such as a FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. The smart(8) utility conceived of by Michael Dexter and authored by Chuck Tuffli addresses many shortcomings of smartctl(8) by focusing on machine-readability, contemporary storage devices, and publication under a BSD two-clause license. This talk will provide a history of diskctl(8) come smart(8) and its motivations, an overview of its implementation and porting to additional platforms including Microsoft Windows, and a tour of its latest features including TSV, libxo, and JSON output.

Michael Dexter
Michael has used Unix systems since just prior to the announcement of the Linux kernel and collapse of the Soviet Union. He has helped raise money for various BSD development efforts and usher the bhyve hypervisor into the FreeBSD operating system. Michael lives in Portland, Oregon where he provides commercial OpenZFS and FreeNAS support, hosts the Portland Linux/Unix Group, and lives with his wife and three children. 

Chuck Tuffli
Chuck is a FreeBSD committer and has primarily worked as an OS/device driver developer on Unix-like operating systems for a variety of technologies including video, graphics, wireless and storage devices. He has written several FreeBSD CAM device drivers and contributed to the CAM Target Layer (ctl), Linuxulator, NVMe driver and NVMe emulator. Chuck has a degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles.