Suggestion: hardware checking/testing functionality
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Many topics get replies like 'prollally hardware problem'. Wouldn't it be nice to have that functionality standard? I know FreeBSD has many ways of doing that, but a simple System/check hardware would be a great thing. Or even beyond that: automation(!) ( ;D ;D ;D ). As in, have the system automatically run tests (Synology does that) and try to help the sysadmin by warning as soon as possible.
This suggestion will probably be ignored or denied, based on me being the eternal noob in this board, and next to that only a stupid economist, and what the heck do we know about stuff - and we created the financial crisis too, not the corrupted banksters and politicians, so in the end, go away noob, you know nothing about nothing ( ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ).
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Yea, that won't work. I have drives reporting SMART status OK, yet they're failing. If RAM is broken, unless you do a multi-pass memtest (which takes hours depending on your RAM amount) there's no other way of confirming it (well your system would be behaving erratically, sometimes crashing etc.).
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Yea, that won't work. I have drives reporting SMART status OK, yet they're failing. If RAM is broken, unless you do a multi-pass memtest (which takes hours depending on your RAM amount) there's no other way of confirming it (well your system would be behaving erratically, sometimes crashing etc.).
I don't know about online RAM tests, but for SMART-data: short test always lies. Long test lies less. And specifically, I don't know what Synology (very very very serious company too, btw) implemented, but their HDD tests even surprised Western Digital, as they RMA'd some disks after Synology warned for failures about which WD initially said 'probably bullshit SMART test', until I ran WD's own test tools and the disks did appear horribly faulty.
Again, I don't know about online RAM tests. But 'running for hours' in itself should not be the problem, as pfsense is on 24/7 anyway.
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It doesn't work that way. Testing hardware means downtime. pfSense won't be doing its job during hardware test.
Secondly, since you've pointed out multiple times that you are not in IT, WD isn't exactly the brightest example of reliable disks.
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Both S.M.A.R.T. and RAM tests are notoriously unreliable in that they are prone to false negatives.
If a test passes, it doesn't mean everything is OK necessarily, just that the test didn't uncover the problem. But if they find a problem, it's usually a legitimate problem.
RAM testing wouldn't be possible, but it may be possible to nudge an automatic S.M.A.R.T. test now and then.
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You can stick something like this into Cron package if you believe in S.M.A.R.T. :P
