1 Topic by ronbaby

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Topic: GSmartControl ?

There are (at least) two ways I know of to run a nice, friendly, interactive, GUI-based version of Gparted, i.e. (1) boot a Gparted Live CD, and (2) boot a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD, which includes something called "Parted Magic" which, much like the GUI I get when I boot the Gparted Live CD, gives me a nice graphical interface to Gparted.

I prefer the former (i.e. booting the Gparted Live CD) because it boots up a lot faster.  (Getting Parted Magic from the Ultimate Boot CD all the way up seems to take a long time.  Getting to the point where I can do something useful when booting the Gparted Live CD seems much faster.)

One thing that the Gparted Live CD doesn't have however that I find myself needing... or at least wanting... almost every time I am fiddling with disk partitions is some GUI-based thing to check all the current S.M.A.R.T. values and/or run various S.M.A.R.T. drive tests.  Within Parted Magic, there is an icon/button which, when clicked, starts up "GSmartControl", which provides these capabilities.

I'd just like to know if it was ever considered to include something like that in/on the Gparted Live CD.

I personally think that it would be most helpful to have it there.

2 Reply by gedakc

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Re: GSmartControl ?

Thank you for the suggestion of including GSmartControl.

With GParted Live we lean toward keeping the size of the image small, while including tools related to disk partitioning.  I think that GSmartControl fits with this definition.

I will check with our Live image maintainer for his thoughts.

3 Reply by gedakc

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Re: GSmartControl ?

Steven informs me that GSmartControl has been added to gparted-live-0.18.0-5 currently available in the testing directory.

4 Reply by ronbaby

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Re: GSmartControl ?

That is excellent news.

My thanks and great appreciation to all concerned.  A great package is now even better!

5 Reply by ronbaby

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Re: GSmartControl ?

Today I just downloaded and checked gparted-live-0.18.0-5 (amd64) and I found that there was no GSmartControl present within that.

Did I simply miss it, or is it really not in there?

6 Reply by gedakc

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Re: GSmartControl ?

Thank you ronbaby for testing.

Perhaps Steven (our Live image maintainer) did not add an icon on the desktop, or an entry in the right-click menu?

To run the application from a terminal window, you can use the following command:

sudo gsmartctl

Please test if you have the opportunity and report back with your findings.  If something needs changed then we'll need to bring it to Steven's attention.

7 Reply by ronbaby

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Re: GSmartControl ?

Oh!  OK.  I had suggested adding GSmartControl in the same way as it was inside of Parted Magic, and then when you said that it had been added I just assumed that you meant it was added with a desktop icon.

But apparently not. :-(

So anyway, I tried what you suggested (sudo gsmartctl) but you evidently misspelled the command name.  Instead, "sudo gsmartcontrol" works, for some value of "works".

Unfortunately, that value asymptotically approaches zero.

The thing started up and immediately printed all of the following before abruptly exiting:

<warn> [app] SmartctlParser::parse_section_info_property(): Unknown property "Rotation rate"

And then that exact same error again, for a total of 6 times, for these additional things:  "Vendor", "Product", "Revision", "Logical block size", and "Device type"

The finally these errors:

terminate called after throwing an instance of `std::out_of_range' what() basic_string::substring

then the program dies and I was exited back to the command prompt.

All things considered, I do believe that this needs more testing (by the actual implementer(s)).

8 Reply by gedakc

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Re: GSmartControl ?

Thank you ronbaby for reporting back with your test results.  I have raised the issue with our Live image maintainer.

Normally adding a package from a GNU/Linux distribution should just work.  Obviously in this case it did not.  Please note that we do all of this work voluntarily on our own time.  The more work others can help us with (such as testing), then the more time we can spend on other areas of improving GParted.  The main focus with GParted Live is to provide a small bootable GNU Linux distribution that enables all of the capabilities of the GParted application.  All other functionality is
gravy.  :-)

9 Reply by ronbaby

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Re: GSmartControl ?

gedakc wrote:

Thank you ronbaby for reporting back with your test results.  I have raised the issue with our Live image maintainer.

Normally adding a package from a GNU/Linux distribution should just work.  Obviously in this case it did not.  Please note that we do all of this work voluntarily on our own time.  The more work others can help us with (such as testing), then the more time we can spend on other areas of improving GParted.

I understand, and that's why I'm willing to take time to try to report the results I've seen both completely and accurately.  I wish that I had the time to help on the coding, but I don't, so I'll just have to try to help by being a faithful guinea pig.

The main focus with GParted Live is to provide a small bootable GNU Linux distribution that enables all of the capabilities of the GParted application.  All other functionality is
gravy.  :-)

Yes.  Thank you.  I do understand.

10 Reply by gedakc

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Re: GSmartControl ?

Thank you for your understanding.

11 Reply by stevenshiau

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Re: GSmartControl ?

Apparently this is a bug. It was actually reported:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … bug=722989
A patched version 0.8.7-2 was available. However, no idea why it's no available on the repository.
I will ask on the Debian bugs system.

Steven.