[Kde-hardware-devel] GSoC Proposal : S.M.A.R.T HDD health and ISO file / optical disk management

[Anant Kamath]

So I modified the proposal to better explain the objectives and why it is
being done:
It still lacks the specific details of the technical implementation, but
it's getting there

----------------------------------------------------
Easy disk management in KDE

Use cases / design inspiration:

John just wants to be notified by mail or by a notification in the system
tray, when his drive is possibly about to fail. He wants avoid launching a
program regularly to manually run tests/ check the health of her drives,
and definitely does not want to go through long reports nor try to
understanding individual SMART attributes.

Users like John would prefer an application which he would need to run just
once, or even better configure once directly from System Settings, to
enable email / tray notifications, and would like KDE to take care of the
rest forever


Jane is a power user and would additionaly like the ability to see the
individual SMART attributes for herself, and easily export the data
/results of tests. She would also like to like to run tests at will and
configure the regularity of scheduled tests herself.


Jane would like an advanced GUI displaying the various attributes, perhaps
with tooltips explaining what the represent and if lower values are better,
etc., and an simple button to export the data in a text file or an XML/HTML
file. She would also like to be able to tweak/configure the scheduling of
tests and configure notifications.

Susan would like a simple menu item when she right-clicks the icon of a
optical disk in dolphin, whereby she can easily copy a disk, with as few
clicks and questions asked, as possible. She preferably would like to just
click Copy Disk and be prompted to insert a blank medium.

Tom wants to be easily create an iso as a backup for his disk which he can
either burn onto a disk later. He would also like to to be able to easily
mount ISOs directly from dolphin, which when mounted would appear as disks
along with the rest of the storage media in dolphin and other places. He
would like to be able to unmount the ISO(s) just as easily.

Jane again would prefer to be choose additional options before she burns
any of her ISO files or copies disks; like burn speed, etc. among other
options. She would be presented with a 'advanced settings' dialog which
would enable her to do the necessary configuration.


-----------------
Components:
1)A System settings /KCM module for configuring the scheduling of SMART
tests, and to configure the medium and frequency of notifications.
For example some users would prefer an pop up notification with a link to
test results everytime a test was run.. some would want a notification only
when impending failure was detected. Also some would wish for email
notifications additionally.

2)A system settings module to present a GUI for viewing the health status &
individual attributes, running short/long tests and exporting the data to
file. This would also integrate the 1st module to enable configuration of
scheduling and notifications.
This would be launchable as a separate application, and also be made a part
of kinfocenter to augment the hard-drive information in the 'Device
Information' section.


3)A small, streamlined application for burning ISOs and copying disks,
which would show advanced options only when requested explicitly.

4)Context menus entries in dolphin for ISO files to enable burning ISOs and
copying  disks as defined in the use cases above

5)A small application to mount/unmount ISOs. ISOs will be mountable easily
with a single click in dolphin. Additionaly when ISOs are mounted, an icon
would appear in dolphin for the mounted ISO along with the other storage
devices listed, which would behave as it were a shortcut / icon for a
regular optical disk.
The right click menu for this icon/device would have an option to unmount.
Additionaly if enabled by the user, a system-tray icon with a menu to mount
ISOs via a file dialog and to list mounted ISOs (which can be unmounted)
will be shown.

6)If time permits a plasma data-engine and a plasmoid to expose a subset of
data like hard disk temperature, and a simple health indicator.

-------------------
Actual nitty-gritties of implementation (still to be worked out completely):

In addition to what I've put in my original post in this thread.. :
I've discovered that Udisks itself implements SMART features by using
libatasmart.. So perhaps the issue of Udisks / Udisks 2 can be sidestepped
by using libatasmart directly?

Scheduling + possibly email notification can be made possible by using
smartd.


Also for the ISO part, while going through libk3b's README, I came across
this:
    "If you want to use it please be aware that the API is far from stable"


--
Anant Kamath
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-hardware-devel/attachments/20120319/59072848/attachment.html>