Detecting drive's position on SAS backplane

TrueNAS General
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I’m looking for a way to determine the drive’s position on the SAS backplane, without having to remove it, and lacking a foresight to label the trays. I have an HBA card running in IT mode, but I understand that there are still tools, such as sas3ircu, that would allow you to find info on which drive is plugged where and even turn on a locate beacon.

Having ssh access to the truenas I see that said command has not been included in the latest distribution, and apt is locked so there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to install it. I don’t want to run a chance of breaking something if I can help it, so if at least a position data (SAS id?) can be determined from the logs somewhere it would still be sufficient for my needs. Alternatively if there is an app available that I could install to use with truenas scale, that would be even better.

Edit: I’m using a supermicro AOC-S3008L-L8E-NI22 card

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Ok, I found a command line solution of just downloading a sas3ircu command in lieu of apt-getting it (which apparently would not be possible to begin with). For those who would have found themselves in a similar situation, here are the instructions which proved useful for me:

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dd if=/dev/sdXXX of=/dev/null

Will read from a specified device. If you have drive activity lights you can tell which one.

Label your device bays with the last 4-5 digits of the associated drive serial.

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I like it!!! Works like a charm :slight_smile: Thank you @Stux

1 Like
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There’s a comparable utility in Linux, but I don’t remember what it is. This script is a handy wrapper:

I use it in my own script to light up failure LEDs for failed drives: