Why does SMART daemon report an issue if the fstab shows noauto?

Question

All partitions on my primary internal drive are mounted directly under "/".

All my secondary drive partitions are mounted under "/site", to avoid automounter issues arising if mount point is specified under "/media". These secondary partitions all have the noauto option specified in fstab.

So ... why does SMART report annoying emails of problem with partitions when I don't mount those? If I mount them, those emails stop being generated!

How can SMART be told to stop annoying me and clogging up the root email account?

Text of the emails (standard messages):

From root@OasisMega1 Sun Jan  1 21:44:49 2023
Subject: SMART error (CurrentPendingSector) detected on host: OasisMega1
To: <root@OasisMega1>
X-Mailer: mail (GNU Mailutils 3.7)

This message was generated by the smartd daemon running on:

   host name:  OasisMega1
   DNS domain: [Empty]

The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon:

Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], 10 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors

Device info:
WDC WD5000AAKS-00V1A0, S/N:WD-WMAWF0060756, WWN:5-0014ee-0018be658, FW:05.01D05, 500 GB

For details see host's SYSLOG.

You can also use the smartctl utility for further investigation.
The original message about this issue was sent at Sun Jun 12 17:49:51 2022 EDT
Another message will be sent in 24 hours if the problem persists.

The syslog entries (distilled to remove repeats) are as follows:

Jan  1 22:14:47 OasisMega1 smartd[1232]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], 10 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
Jan  2 13:17:41 OasisMega1 smartd[1202]: Device: /dev/sdb, type changed from 'scsi' to 'sat'
Jan  2 13:17:41 OasisMega1 smartd[1202]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], opened
Jan  2 13:17:41 OasisMega1 smartd[1202]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], WDC WD5000AAKS-00V1A0, S/N:WD-WMAWF0060756, WWN:5-0014ee-0018be658, FW:05.01D05, 500 GB
Jan  2 13:17:41 OasisMega1 smartd[1202]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], found in smartd database: Western Digital Caviar Blue (SATA)
Jan  2 13:17:41 OasisMega1 smartd[1202]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], is SMART capable. Adding to "monitor" list.
Jan  2 13:17:41 OasisMega1 smartd[1202]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], state read from /var/lib/smartmontools/smartd.WDC_WD5000AAKS_00V1A0-WD_WMAWF0060756.ata.state
Jan  2 13:17:41 OasisMega1 smartd[1202]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], 10 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
Jan  2 13:17:41 OasisMega1 smartd[1202]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 97 to 119
Jan  2 13:17:41 OasisMega1 smartd[1202]: Device: /dev/sdb [SAT], state written to /var/lib/smartmontools/smartd.WDC_WD5000AAKS_00V1A0-WD_WMAWF0060756.ata.state
Jan  2 13:17:43 OasisMega1 kernel: [   22.375392] Adding 1048572k swap on /dev/sdb3.  Priority:4 extents:1 across:1048572k FS

fstab entries:

# /dev/sdb3    swap     DB003_S1   {something}   1G            [SWAP] INTERNAL
UUID={something}       none            swap    sw,pri=4        0       0

# /dev/sdb4    ext2     DB003_F1   {something}   195.3G        /site/DB003_F1 INTERNAL
UUID={something}    /site/DB003_F1  ext2    defaults,nofail,noauto  0   0

# /dev/sdb5    ext2     DB003_F2   {something}   267.5G        /site/DB003_F2 INTERNAL
UUID={something}    /site/DB003_F2  ext2    defaults,nofail,noauto  0   0

• UbuntuMATE 20.04
• AMD
• Linux 5.4.0-135-generic #152-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 23 20:19:22 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Answer 1

Taking everyone's advice, I will implement the following temporary modifications to /etc/smartd.conf .

That will give me more to evaluate what my next step will be.

##DISABLED##DEVICESCAN -d removable -n standby -m root -M exec /usr/share/smartmontools/smartd-runner
/dev/sda -a -o on -S on -s (S/../.././16|L/../../6/16)
/dev/sdb -H -l error -l selftest -t -I 194
/dev/sdc -d scsi -s L/../.././16

I'm hoping that last one only kicks in when the external USB drive is actually plugged in.

I'm also unsure how to modify the sdb line for long scan at 4 pm daily only (is that like for sdc ?), or would that conflict with the other defined settings for sdb ?