DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / ledmon / ledctl.8.en
ledctl(8) Intel(R) Enclosure LED Control Application ledctl(8)

ledctl - Intel(R) LED control application for a storage enclosures.

ledctl [OPTIONS] pattern_name=list_of_devices ...

The ledctl is an user space application designed to control LEDs associated with each slot in an enclosure or a drive bay. The LEDs of devices listed in list_of_devices are set to the given pattern pattern_name and all other LEDs are turned off. User must have root privileges to use this application.

There are two types of systems: 2-LEDs systems (Activity LED, Status LED) and 3-LEDs systems (Activity LED, Locate LED, Fail LED).

The ledctl application supports LED management of the SAS/SATA and PCIe storages.

Supported protocols/methods for LED management are:

  • SES-2 and SMP for SAS devices,
  • LED messages over SGPIO for SATA,
  • VMD and NPEM for PCIe.

SAF-TE protocol is not supported.

For SAS/SATA storages supporting controllers may transmit LED management information to the backplane controllers via the SGPIO interface. The SGPIO bus carries bit patterns, which translate into LED blink patterns in accordance with the International Blinking Pattern Interpretation (IBPI) of SFF-8489 specification for SGPIO. Please note some enclosures do not stick close to the SFF-8489 specification. It might happen that the enclosure processor will accept the IBPI pattern but it will blink LEDs not according to SFF-8489 specification or it has a limited number of patterns supported.

The ledctl application has been verified to work with Intel(R) storage controllers (i.e. Intel(R) AHCI controller and Intel(R) SAS controller). The application might work with storage controllers of other vendors (especially SCSI/SAS controllers). However, storage controllers of other vendors have not been tested.

The ledmon application has the highest priority when accessing LEDs. It means that some patterns set by ledctl may have no effect if ledmon is running (except Locate pattern).

The ledctl application is a part of Intel(R) Enclosure LED Utilities.

The ledctl utilizes the following documents as references:

  • SGPIO (Serial GPIO) - SFF-8485
  • IBPI (International Blinking Pattern Interpretation) - SFF-8489
  • LED Enclosure management messages - AHCI specification rev 1.3, section 12.2.1.
  • SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) - T10/1760-D
  • SES-2 (SCSI Enclosure Services-2) - T10/1559-D
  • SMP (Serial Management Protocol) - T10/1760-D
  • NPEM (Native PCIe Enclosure Management) - PCIe base specification rev 4.0
  • VMD (Intel(R) Volume Management Device) - Intel(R) VROC (VMD NVMe RAID) Quick

    Configuration Guide rev 1.2

The ledctl application accepts the following names for pattern_name argument according to SFF-8489 specification.

Turns Locate LED associated with the given device(s) on.
Turns only Locate LED off.
Turns Status LED, Failure LED and Locate LED off.
Turns only Status LED and Failure LED off.
Visualizes "In a Critical Array" pattern.
Visualizes "Rebuild" pattern.
Visualizes "In a Failed Array" pattern.
Visualizes "Hotspare" pattern.
Visualizes "Predicted Failure Analysis" pattern.
Visualizes "Failure" pattern.
SES-2 R/R ABORD
SES-2 REBUILD/REMAP
SES-2 IN FAILED ARRAY
SES-2 IN CRIT ARRAY
SES-2 CONS CHECK
SES-2 HOT SPARE
SES-2 RSVD DEVICE
SES-2 OK
SES-2 IDENT
SES-2 REMOVE
SES-2 INSERT
SES-2 MISSING
SES-2 DO NOT REMOVE
SES-2 ACTIVE
SES-2 ENABLE BYP B
SES-2 ENABLE BYP A
SES-2 DEVICE OFF
SES-2 FAULT
SES-2 PRDFAIL

When non SES-2 pattern is send to device in enclosure automatic translation is being done.

locate is translated to ses_ident
locate_off is translated to ~ses_ident
normal or off is translated to ses_ok
ica or degraded is translated to ses_ica
rebuild is translated to ses_rebuild
ifa or failed_array is translated to ses_ifa
hotspare is translated to ses_hotspare
pfa is translated to ses_prdfail
failure or disk_failed is translated to ses_fault

The application accepts a list of devices in two formats. The first format is a list with comma separated elements. The second format is a list in curly braces and elements are separated by space. See examples section below for details.

A device is a path to file in /dev directory or in /sys/block directory. It may identify a block device, a RAID device or a container device. In case of a RAID device or a container device a state will be set for all block devices associated, respectively.

The LEDs of devices listed in list_of_devices are set to the given pattern pattern_name and all other LEDs are turned off (unless --listed-only option is given).

Sets a path to local log file. If this option is specified the global log file /var/log/ledctl.log is not used.
Prints this text out and exits.
Displays version of ledctl and information about the license and exits.
Prints information (system path and type) of all controllers detected by ledmon and exits.
With this option ledctl will change state only on devices listed in CLI. The rest of devices will not be touched.
Verbose level - 'quiet' means no logging at all and 'all' means to log everything. The levels are given in order. If user specifies more then one verbose option the last option comes into effect. The default level is 'warning'. Verbose level also can be set by --log-level=level.

/var/log/ledctl.log
Global log file, used by all instances of ledctl application. To force logging to user defined file use -l option switch.

The following example illustrates how to locate a single block device.

    ledctl locate=/dev/sda

The following example illustrates how to turn Locate LED off for the same block device.

    ledctl locate_off=/dev/sda

The following example illustrates how to locate disks of a RAID device and how to set rebuild pattern for two block devices at the same time. This example uses both formats of device list.

     ledctl locate=/dev/md127 rebuild={ /sys/block/sd[a-b] }

The following example illustrates how to turn Status LED and Failure LED off for the given device(s).

     ledctl off={ /dev/sda /dev/sdb }

The following example illustrates how to locate a three block devices. This example uses the first format of device list.

     ledctl locate=/dev/sda,/dev/sdb,/dev/sdc

Copyright (c) 2009-2021 Intel Corporation.

This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. See the built-in help for details on the License and the lack of warranty.

ledmon(8), ledmon.conf(5)

This manual page was written by Artur Wojcik <artur.wojcik@intel.com>. It may be used by others.

January 2021 LEDCTL Version 0.95