Download button for device SMART data in webGui


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The webGui interface for smart data review is looking really good so far.

 

One of the habits I see now is people posting images of the smart reports for various sections into the forum which makes for messy review. it also doesn't contain the whole report and picture of the drive in question.

 

In addition, during a recent request for assistance, the user was told to manually present the output of smartctl -A /dev/sd? into the forum.  This required them to drop to command line (and do 20 characters.  ;) )

 

I propose that the smart data interface also provide a button or mode to download the whole smart report as a dos cr/lf formatted text file so that it can be archived and/or attached in it's entirety into a forum post for review. (like the tools/syslog download button).

 

I know there will be people saying LF delimited is good enough, use a better text viewer, but even the better ones handle cr/lf without issue and many people using standard windows without an advanced editor can participate in problem resolution.

 

I'm not so sure we need to zip these files as they are small and as text files they can be named according to however a person wants to archive them.  If they are zipped, I think it would make it more difficult to differentiate smart reports and/or compare them rapidly.

 

I had started working on a button to save the smart data as model-serial-ccyymmdd-hhmm.txt into /boot/log but since the interface is still in flux, a local download button like we have for syslog in the tools section would work really nice.

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  • 2 months later...

This is looking good but a few modifications please. The SMART report is most helpful when all three sections are available for review. Breaking the report in three is nice for presentation but makes requesting and/or providing a SMART report much more painful than it needs to be.

 

The download button should include the entire SMART report. Currently only the 1/3 of the report being displayed is downloaded. This then requires the requesting of all three sections with an explanation of where to look and what to copy.

 

The display should include an option to view all three sections at once. This way a user can select, copy, and paste a single block of text in order to add a report to a posting. This is how I prefer to receive SMART reports. They are small enough that having a user paste an entire report into a post is preferable to an attachment.

 

This could all be accomplished by not breaking the report into 3 sections for display. Please make a single SMART view an option if not the default.

 

Thanks,

David

 

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Looks nice and should be helpful. Does it do more than add the Diagnostic button? I didn't miss anything did I?

 

I'm still reiterating my request though. Dividing the SMART report into 3 parts is counter-productive. The ability to select and copy the text as a single block is paramount.

 

I've some suggestions for the plug-in. Show the total size of the raw files and display the size of the zip file in the GUI. If the zip file is too large for the forum the user needs to be warned. Perhaps give an option for a multi-part zip file. Allow the user the deselect each log file; although, they all should be included by default.

 

Provide an option to automatically upload text files singly to file-bin or something equivalent with the URL displayed for easy pasting into a forum post. This option should be discouraged unless the zip file is too big.

 

Thanks,

David

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Two things ...

 

1. In the next version clicking on Attributes will generate a complete SMART report of the selected disk as a plain text file

 

2. With help and input of several people, started a new utility Diagnostics which will collect all the relevant settings and files from the system, to do easier troubleshooting.

    This utility can be activated from the GUI or from a telnet/ssh session (in case the GUI hangs).

 

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I've some suggestions for the plug-in. Show the total size of the raw files and display the size of the zip file in the GUI. If the zip file is too large for the forum the user needs to be warned. Perhaps give an option for a multi-part zip file. Allow the user the deselect each log file; although, they all should be included by default.

 

Provide an option to automatically upload text files singly to file-bin or something equivalent with the URL displayed for easy pasting into a forum post. This option should be discouraged unless the zip file is too big.

 

I did some testing, and found that on my system, the zip is about 55kb, and the syslog (135kb) zipped by itself was 20kb.  Assuming roughly 25kb to 30kb of overhead for most systems, which shouldn't grow (I don't think), it will be the syslog that grows when there's trouble, so dropping other components will be of little help.  In the future when other log files are included, that could change.  But I suppose an option to separately zip the SMART reports might help, if the syslog was VERY large.

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I've some suggestions for the plug-in. Show the total size of the raw files and display the size of the zip file in the GUI. If the zip file is too large for the forum the user needs to be warned. Perhaps give an option for a multi-part zip file. Allow the user the deselect each log file; although, they all should be included by default.

 

Provide an option to automatically upload text files singly to file-bin or something equivalent with the URL displayed for easy pasting into a forum post. This option should be discouraged unless the zip file is too big.

 

I did some testing, and found that on my system, the zip is about 55kb, and the syslog (135kb) zipped by itself was 20kb.  Assuming roughly 25kb to 30kb of overhead for most systems, which shouldn't grow (I don't think), it will be the syslog that grows when there's trouble, so dropping other components will be of little help.  In the future when other log files are included, that could change.  But I suppose an option to separately zip the SMART reports might help, if the syslog was VERY large.

I'm not sure the extra complexity (for both the user interface and the developer) to split is worth it. In those rare instances where it is too large to attach in the forum, there is a simple way for the user to split it themselves, just unzip and rezip into separate zip files. Much better than what happens now, with people complaining that it is too large to post because they haven't zipped it, or putting it on some hosting site.
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The created zip file is stored locally on the computer of the user. If uploading to the forum doesn't work because of size restrictions, the user can easily unzip the file and create smaller chunks himself/herself. Or use a better compression method like 7zip ...

 

Understand the desire to make it as easy as possible for the user, but at the end we may expect some commonsense and don't need to deliver everything on a golden plate ;)

 

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1. In the next version clicking on Attributes will generate a complete SMART report of the selected disk as a plain text file

 

I was just testing this out in RC2.  It creates files as diskn-attributes.rtf.

 

I think this should be simpler.

Such as Model-Serial.txt where it's just plain text as CRLF.

 

 

As far as delivering on a golden plate, this isn't necessarily that.

 

 

Differentiate Model-Serial so people can differentiate and it's not based on slots, since disks change in slots over time.

Keep it simple txt with CRLF so it can be rapidly downloaded and viewed with standard notepad, vi or used as input to diff or some other unix tool.

 

If you pass the filename through strftime, then people could add  %Y%m%d-%H%M so it can be named/archived over a time period.

 

 

I've seen diagnostics zip archive, Bravo, Can you name the Attributes smart log similar to that with Model-Serial.txt

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The name of the SMART report can be changed similar to what is done in the diagnostics utlity.

 

One challenge though, I took the extension .rtf because when using .txt the browser will just open the file inside the browser itself instead of uploading it to the PC for local saving.

 

I haven't found a way to change this behavior. Unfortunately the normal approach by using 'header' statements in PHP doesn't work on emhttp.

 

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The name of the SMART report can be changed similar to what is done in the diagnostics utlity.

 

One challenge though, I took the extension .rtf because when using .txt the browser will just open the file inside the browser itself instead of uploading it to the PC for local saving.

 

I haven't found a way to change this behavior. Unfortunately the normal approach by using 'header' statements in PHP doesn't work on emhttp.

 

Hmm, I had not seen that.

What browser are you using?

 

I had attempted this before and with chrome it would just save it.

I never when further with it since there was no sense in having two people do it.

 

I have to think about this s'more.

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What browser are you using?

 

The usual suspects; chrome, firefox, msie, safari -> all display .txt files within the browser.

 

If you find a solution, I am all ears :)

 

 

I have to go through some old code I tucked somewhere.

In that code I was able to pass model and serial through to the page where the header bar would display it along with Diskn.

I had some kind of save button that would save the attributes locally. I have to locate that then retro fit it to the current rc.

I'll repost when I get to that point.

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