mjhjmtu

We're busy setting up smartmontools on our various Linux based servers and although it works, we want to streamline the process a bit. As I understand, we can enable automatic testing which should perform a test each 4 hours, but it does not indicate exactly what test is completed?

Is this test the same as running a short test? We're currently manually doing short tests daily so if the automatic test done each 4 hours is the same I would rather just rely on the automatic testing.

The short answer is no, these are not equivalent. Automatic testing is just data collection; the short test is an actual test.

This is discussed (at length) in the smartctl manpage, in the section describing the --offlineauto settings:

The second category of testing is called "offline" testing. This type of test can, in principle,
degrade the device performance. The -o on option causes this offline testing to be carried out,
automatically, on a regular scheduled basis. Normally, the disk will suspend offline testing
while disk accesses are taking place, and then automatically resume it when the disk would otherwise be idle, so in practice it has little effect. Note that a one-time offline test can also be
carried out immediately upon receipt of a user command. See the -t offline option below, which
causes a one-time offline test to be carried out immediately.

and

The third category of testing (and the only category for which the word ‘testing’ is really an
appropriate choice) is "self" testing. This third type of test is only performed (immediately) when a command to run it is issued. The -t and -X options can be used to carry out and abort
such self-tests; please see below for further details.

So -t offline is equivalent to the automatic testing enabled with -o on, but that’s not testing, it’s just data collection (it updates the “offline” attributes). The short test, scheduled manually (or using smartd), is an actual test, as is the long test; smartd comes with example settings enabling nightly short tests and weekly long tests.