megactl(1)

✨ NAME ✨

megactl — diagnostics on megaraid adapters and attached disks 💖

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

megactl [-vest] [-H] [-l log-page-nr] [-T long|short] [target ...]

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, because this one is so useful 🫶

megactl reports diagnostics on megaraid adapters and attached disks. it lets you dump controller log pages so you can go peek at error conditions, temperature conditions, and self-test conditions, it initiates self-test diagnostics, and it documents your adapter and logical drive configuration. like, the whole picture. no crumbs left. ✨

Now, targets — this is where people get lost, so lock in 🔒. A target device can be:

• an adapter, e.g. a0
• a channel, e.g. a0c0
• an individual disk, e.g. a0c0t0

If you specify no target at all, it reports configuration and drive state on all adapters. and if a target matches a whole collection of disks, the operations get applied to all the matching devices — it's giving "reply all to the group chat" energy 💀

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

Options are:

• -v — increase program verbosity. more talking. more lore. 🗣️
• -e — dump read (0x03), write (0x02), and verify (0x05) error log pages.
• -s — dump self-test (0x10) log page.
• -t — dump temperature (0x0d) log page.
• -l page — dump the specified log page. and bestie, log page 0 is the one that documents the log pages the device supports — so if you're confused, start there, it's literally the map 🧭
• -p — do not report physical disks. reports only adapters and logical drives. useful for concisely documenting adapter configuration. (she's keeping it short, periodt 💅)
• -T test — initiate the background short or long self-test procedure. the test may take up to an hour to complete, but it does not inhibit access to the device. you can monitor the test using the -s option. ⏳
• -H — perform an adapter health check. inspects state of all logical and physical drives and battery backup unit and reports problem conditions. if all is well, it generates no output. useful in a cron job. (silent when everything's fine?? the DREAM 😌)
• -B — when performing health check, do not treat battery problems as failures.
• -V — show version.

N.B. 🔥 The background long self test is a useful tool for diagnosing problems with individual disks. But be cautious with program usage. "megactl -T long" with no targets will initiate a background long self test on every drive on every adapter. This may not be what you want. 😭 (do NOT do this casually, bestie, that's a whole fleet getting tested at once)

By default, the health check option inspects log pages 0x02, 0x03, and 0x05 for uncorrected read, write, and verify errors, 0x0d for excess temperature conditions, and 0x10 for failed self tests. If, however, any of the log page options is specified, only the designated log pages are inspected. 👑

This program requires the device file /dev/megadev0 to be present on the system. If your system does not have this device file, you may create it either by executing Dell's "dellmgr" program once, or by locating the megadev entry in /proc/devices and creating /dev/megadev0 as a character device with suitable permissions with a matching major device number and a minor number of 0. 🎀

and that's the whole page, bestie 🌈 — from the General Commands Manual, megactl(1), dated 03 March 2024. go forth and check your adapters 💜🦋✨