what's the number of times the letter "a" appears in:
q: how do i convince smartmontools that my ssd is not a hard drive? i'm running debian wheezy, stock smartmontools package (smartctl 5.41).
an ssd, mushkin mknssdcr120gb-mx, is reporting usage lifetime information in smart attribute id 231 (decimal). for hard drives this attribute is temperature_celsius, and unfortunately smartmontools is interpreting it as such:
smart attributes data structure revision number: 10
vendor specific smart attributes with thresholds:
id# attribute_name          flag     value worst thresh type      updated  when_failed raw_value
[...]
231 temperature_celsius     0x0013   001   001   010    pre-fail  always   failing_now 21474836481
[...]

no, not 21 billion degrees celsius ... it is supposed to be an indication of the ssd life left.
i tried updating the drive database using the command:
# /usr/sbin/update-smart-drivedb
/usr/share/smartmontools/drivedb.h updated from branches/release_5_41_drivedb
#

... and restarting smartd, but the drive is still not recognized as an ssd.
is there a solution other than adding the backports repo and installing the smartmontools backports version? if i have to do this, then i will, but i currently don't have any backports software on this server and it seems like there must be another way.

a: when you run update-smart-drivedb it downloads the most recent database from the source site for smartmontools, in theory more recent than any backport. 
you should get a reasonable turn around time if you contact them directly ..
from https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki ...

device information
if your drive is not in the ​current version of smartmontools drive
  database you can help to improve smartmontools information by sending
  a report about your drive to our mailinglist ​smartmontools-database.
we collect info about usb devices that have been successfully or
  unsuccessfully tested with smartmontools. if you have a device not
  listed there, please tell us the test result, by editing the wiki
  page, and/or by sending an email to the ​smartmontools-database
  mailinglist.


user
I counted one hundred and twenty-four "a"s in that text.
assistant