ATACTL(8) OpenBSD System Manager's Manual ATACTL(8)NAMEatactl - a program to manipulate ATA (IDE) devices
SYNOPSISatactl device [command [arg ...]]
DESCRIPTIONatactl allows a user or system administrator to issue commands to and
otherwise control devices which reside on standard IDE and ATA
controllers. It is used by specifying a device to manipulate, a command
to perform, and any arguments the command may require.
atactl supports the following commands: acousticdisable, acousticset,
apmdisable, apmset, checkpower, dump, identify (the default), idle,
poddisable, podenable, puisdisable, puisenable, puisspinup,
readaheaddisable, readaheadenable, readattr, secdisablepass, secerase,
secfreeze, secsetpass, secunlock, setidle, setstandby, sleep,
smartautosave, smartdisable, smartenable, smartoffline, smartread,
smartreadlog, smartstatus, standby, writecachedisable, and
writecacheenable.
Support for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (SMART)
functionality is indicated by the device with `SMART feature set' in the
output of the identify command. SMART commands and the readattr command
are for experts only.
Support for Security Mode functionality is indicated by the device with
`Security Mode feature set' in the output of the identify command. Be
very careful while playing with these commands: loss of the user and
master passwords for the device will result in an inaccessible device.
A full description of the commands follows:
acousticdisable
Disables support for automatic acoustic management on the
specified device. Note that devices supporting automatic
acoustic management may refuse to disable it, resulting in an
`ATA device returned Aborted Command' warning.
acousticset acoustic-management-level
Enables and sets the automatic acoustic management level to the
requested level on the specified device (if supported). Device
performance may increase with increasing automatic acoustic
management levels at the cost of potentially generating more
noise and requiring more power. Valid values are 0 up to and
including 126. Support for automatic acoustic management is
indicated by the device with `Automatic Acoustic Management
feature set' in the output of the identify command.
apmdisable
Disables support for advanced power management on the specified
device. Note that devices supporting advanced power management
may refuse to disable it, resulting in an `ATA device returned
Aborted Command' warning.
apmset power-management-level
Enables and sets the advanced power management level to the
requested level on the specified device (if supported). Device
performance may increase with increasing power management levels
at the cost of potentially requiring more power. Values up to
and including 126 allow the device to go into standby mode and
spin-down the disk. This may cause disk time-outs and is
therefore not recommended. These values are more suitable
optimization for low power usage on infrequently used devices.
Values 127 up to and including 253 do not allow the device to go
to standby mode and are more suitable for optimization for
performance. Support for advanced power management is indicated
by the device with `Advanced Power Management feature set' in
the output of the identify command.
checkpower
Will print out if the device is in Active, Idle, or Standby
power management mode.
dump Extracts the records about issued ATA commands from the log
buffer. The log buffer is cleared after extraction.
identify
Identify the specified device, displaying the device's vendor,
product, revision strings, supported capabilities and enabled
capabilities. This command is the default.
idle Place the specified device into Idle mode. This mode may
consume less power than Active mode.
poddisable
Disallows the specified device to revert to power-on default
(pod) settings after a software reset. In other words this
permits the settings that have been modified since power-on to
remain after a software reset.
podenable
Allows the specified device to revert to power-on default (pod)
settings after a software reset.
puisdisable
Disables power-up in standby (puis) on the specified device,
causing the device to spin up the disks after power-up. This
should be the factory default setting of the device and it is
recommended to leave this setting disabled.
puisenable
Enables power-up in standby (puis) on the specified device,
causing the device to wait while spinning up the disks after
power-up. This may cause problems at boot if the device is too
slow in spin-up. This option is therefore not recommended
unless the implications are understood. Note that the power-up
in standby mode stays enabled over power-downs, hardware and
software resets. Support for power-up in standby is indicated
by the device with `Power-up in standby feature set' in the
output of the identify command.
puisspinup
Explicitly spins up the device if power-up in standby (puis)
mode is enabled.
readaheaddisable
Disables read look-ahead on the specified device. This may
decrease performance. Note that the device may use `vendor
specific' behaviour in implementing this, so it is not
recommended to issue this command on a disk containing any
currently mounted filesystems.
readaheadenable
Enables read look-ahead on the specified device. This may
increase performance. Support for and status of read look-ahead
is indicated by the device with `read look-ahead' in the output
of the identify command.
readattr
Displays attribute thresholds and values for the specified
device. Besides attribute values, device vendors may provide
additional information shown in the last column, ``Raw''.
Attributes names can be completely wrong since they vary between
vendors and even models, so don't rely on it. SMART must be
enabled while executing this command or the device will return
an error.
secdisablepass user | master
Disables the lock mode for the specified device with user or
master password. This command won't change the master password.
The master password will be reactivated when a user password is
set.
secerase user | master [enhanced]
Erases all user data and unlocks the specified device.
Execution of this command with the master password is the only
way to unlock a device locked at maximum security level with the
secsetpass command if the user's password is lost or unknown.
There are two erase modes: normal and enhanced. Default erase
mode is normal. In the normal erase mode this command will
write binary zeroes to all user data areas. The enhanced erase
mode is optional and may not be supported by the device. When
enhanced erase mode is specified, the device will write
predetermined data patterns to all user data areas. In enhanced
erase mode, all previously written user data will be
overwritten, including sectors that are no longer in use due to
reallocation. This command will disable the device lock mode,
however, the master password will still be stored internally
within the device and may be reactivated later when a new user
password is set.
secfreeze
Prevents changes to passwords until a following power cycle.
The purpose of this command is to prevent password setting
attacks on the security system. After command completion any
other commands that update the device lock mode will be aborted.
secsetpass user high | maximum
secsetpass master
Sets password and security level for the specified device.
There are two passwords, user and master, and two security
levels, high and maximum. The maximum password length is 32
symbols. The security system is enabled by sending a user
password to the device with this command. When the security
system is enabled, access to user data on the device is denied
after a power cycle until the user password is sent to the
device with the secunlock command. A master password may be set
in addition to the user password. The purpose of the master
password is to allow an administrator to establish a password
that is kept secret from the user, and which may be used to
unlock the device if the user password is lost. Setting the
master password does not enable security system. Each master
password change decrements the master password revision code
value which is displayed in the identify command output if
supported. After value 0x0001 is reached the next value will be
0xfffe. The security level determines device behavior when the
master password is used to unlock the device. When the security
level is set to high the device requires the secunlock command
if the master password is used to unlock. When the security
level is set to maximum the device requires a secerase command
if the master password is used to unlock it. Execution of the
secerase command erases all user data on the device.
secunlock user | master
Unlocks the specified device with user or master password. The
device will always unlock if a valid user password is received.
If the security level was set to high during the last secsetpass
command, the device will unlock if the master password is
received. If the security level was set to maximum during the
last secsetpass command, the device won't unlock even if the
master password is received.
setidle idle-timer
Places the specified device into Idle mode, and sets the Idle
timer to idle-timer seconds. A value of 0 will disable the Idle
timer.
setstandby standby-timer
Places the specified device into Standby mode, and sets the
Standby timer to standby-timer seconds. A value of 0 will
disable the Standby timer.
sleep Place the specified device into Sleep mode. This mode will
consume less power than Standby mode, but requires a device
reset to resume operation. Typically the wd(4) driver performs
this reset automatically, but this should still be used with
caution.
smartautosave enable | disable
Enables/disables attribute autosave feature on the specified
device.
smartdisable
Disables support for SMART on the specified device. Note that
this means that the device will no longer record any SMART
information.
Note that SMART must be enabled while executing the following
commands or the device will return an error.
smartenable
Enables SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting
Technology) on the specified device (if supported). This causes
the device to record information for prediction of device
degradation and/or faults.
smartoffline subcommand
Causes the specified device to immediately initiate the optional
set of activities that collect SMART data in off-line mode and
then save this data to the device's non-volatile memory, or
execute self-diagnostic test routines in either captive or off-
line mode. The subcommand may be one of the following:
abort Abort off-line mode self-test routine.
collect
Start SMART off-line data collection immediately.
extencaptive
Execute SMART extended self-test routine immediately in
captive mode.
extenoffline
Execute SMART extended self-test routine immediately in
off-line mode.
shortcaptive
Execute SMART short self-test routine immediately in
captive mode.
shortoffline
Execute SMART short self-test routine immediately in
off-line mode.
Note that executing self-test routines in captive mode causes
the device to be not accessible until the routine completes.
This option is therefore not recommended unless the implications
are understood.
smartread
Reads various SMART information from the specified device and
prints it to stdout.
smartreadlog log
Reads specified log and prints it to stdout. The log may be one
of the following:
comp The comprehensive error log.
directory The error log directory.
selftest The self-test log.
summary The summary error log.
smartstatus
Reads the reliability status of the specified device. If the
device reports that one of its thresholds is exceeded (a strong
indication of imminent failure), the warning `SMART threshold
exceeded!' is printed to stderr and a status of 2 is returned.
standby Place the specified device into Standby mode. This mode will
consume less power than Idle mode.
writecachedisable
Disable the write cache on the specified device (if supported).
This may decrease performance. Support for and status of write
caching is indicated by the device with `write cache' in the
output of the identify command.
writecacheenable
Enables the write cache on the specified device (if supported).
This may increase performance, however data still in the
device's cache at powerdown may be lost. The wd(4) driver
performs a cache flush automatically before shutdown.
EXAMPLES
Display the vendor, product, revision strings, and capabilities (such as
SMART support) as reported by /dev/wd0:
# atactl /dev/wd0c identify
Enable SMART support on /dev/wd0 for detection of early warning signs of
device failure:
# atactl /dev/wd0c smartenable
A crontab(5) entry which queries /dev/wd0 each hour for early warning
signs of failure. If the device exceeds one of the SMART thresholds,
atactl will output `SMART threshold exceeded!' to stderr and cron(8)
will mail it.
0 * * * * /sbin/atactl /dev/wd0c smartstatus >/dev/null
SEE ALSOioctl(2), wd(4)HISTORY
The atactl command first appeared in OpenBSD 2.6. Support for acoustic
management, advanced power management, power-up in standby, read look-
ahead, and SMART was added in OpenBSD 2.9.
AUTHORS
The atactl command was written by Ken Hornstein. It was based heavily on
the scsictl command written by Jason R. Thorpe. Support for acoustic
management, advanced power management, power-up in standby, read look-
ahead, and SMART was added by Wouter Slegers.
CAVEATS
Not all devices are created equally. Some may not support the feature
sets and/or commands needed to perform the requested action, even when
the identify command indicates support for the requested action. The
device will typically respond with an `ATA device returned Aborted
Command' if the requested action is not supported. Similarly a device
might not implement all commands in a feature set, so even though
disabling a feature works, enabling might not.
BUGS
The output from the identify command is rather ugly.
Disabling read look-ahead with readaheaddisable might cause problems with
mounted filesystems on that device.
OpenBSD 4.9 January 3, 2010 OpenBSD 4.9
