[mirror_smartmontools-debian.git] / INSTALL

Smartmontools installation instructions
=======================================

$Id: INSTALL 2925 2009-10-02 20:45:54Z chrfranke $

Please also see the smartmontools home page:
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

Table of contents:

[1] System requirements
[2] Installing from SVN
[3] Installing from source tarball
[4] Guidelines for different Linux distributions
[5] Guidelines for FreeBSD
[6] Guidelines for Darwin
[7] Guidelines for NetBSD
[8] Guidelines for Solaris
[9] Guidelines for Cygwin
[10] Guidelines for Windows
[11] Guidelines for OS/2, eComStation
[12] Guidelines for OpenBSD
[13] Comments
[14] Detailed description of ./configure options

[1] System requirements
=======================

    A) Linux

    Any Linux distribution will support smartmontools if it has a
    kernel version greater than or equal to 2.2.14. So any recent
    Linux distribution should support smartmontools.

    There are two parts of smartmontools that may require a patched or
    nonstandard kernel:

    (1) To get the ATA RETURN SMART STATUS command, the kernel needs
    to support the HDIO_DRIVE_TASK ioctl().

    (2) To run Selective Self-tests, the kernel needs to support the
    HDIO_DRIVE_TASKFILE ioctl().

    If your kernel does not support one or both of these ioctls, then
    smartmontools will "mostly" work.  The things that don't work will
    give you harmless warning messages.

    Although "not officially supported" by the developers, smartmontools
    has also been successfully build and run on a legacy Linux system
    with kernel 2.0.33 and libc.so.5. On such systems, the restrictions
    above apply.

    For item (1) above, any 2.4 or 2.6 series kernel will provide
    HDIO_DRIVE_TASK support.  Some 2.2.20 and later kernels also
    provide this support IF they're properly patched and
    configured. [Andre Hedrick's IDE patches may be found at
    http://www.funet.fi/pub/linux/kernel/people/hedrick/ide-2.2.20/ or
    are available from your local kernel.org mirror.  They are not
    updated for 2.2.21 or later, and may contain a few bugs.].
    If the configuration option CONFIG_IDE_TASK_IOCTL
    exists in your 2.2.X kernel source code tree, then your 2.2.X
    kernel will probably support this ioctl. [Note that this kernel
    configuration option does NOT need to be enabled. Its presence
    merely indicates that the required HDIO_DRIVE_TASK ioctl() is
    supported.]

    For item (2) above, your kernel must be configured with the kernel
    configuration option CONFIG_IDE_TASKFILE_IO enabled.  This
    configuration option is present in all 2.4 and 2.6 series
    kernels. Some 2.2.20 and later kernels also provide this support
    IF they're properly patched and configured as described above.

    Please see FAQ section of the URL above for additional details.

    If you are using 3ware controllers, for full functionality you
    must either use version 1.02.00.037 or greater of the 3w-xxxx
    driver, or patch earlier 3ware 3w-xxxx drivers.  See
    http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/3w-xxxx.txt
    for the patch.  The version 1.02.00.037 3w-xxxx.c driver was
    incorporated into kernel 2.4.23-bk2 on 3 December 2003 and into
    kernel 2.6.0-test5-bk11 on 23 September 2003.

    B) FreeBSD

    For FreeBSD support, a 5-current kernel that includes ATAng is
    required in order to support ATA drives.  Even current versions of
    ATAng will not support 100% operation, as the SMART status can not
    be reliably retrieved.  There is patch pending approval of the
    ATAng driver maintainer that will address this issue.

    C) Solaris

    The SCSI code has been tested on a variety of Solaris 8 and 9
    systems.  ATA/IDE code only works on SPARC platform.  All tested
    kernels worked correctly.

    D) NetBSD/OpenBSD

    The code was tested on a 1.6ZG (i.e., 1.6-current) system. It should
    also function under 1.6.1 and later releases (unverified).  Currently
    it doesn't support ATA devices on 3ware RAID controllers.

    E) Cygwin

    The code was tested on Cygwin 1.5.7, 1.5.11 and 1.5.18-22. It should
    also work on other recent releases.

    Release 1.5.15 or later is recommended for Cygwin smartd. Older versions
    do not provide syslogd support.

    Both Cygwin and Windows versions of smartmontools share the same code
    to access the IDE/ATA or SCSI devices. The information in the "Windows"
    section below also applies to the Cygwin version.

    F) Windows

    The code was tested on Windows 98SE, NT4(SP5,SP6), 2000(SP4),
    XP(no SP,SP1a,SP2) and Vista RC 1. It should also work on Windows
    95(OSR2), 98, ME and 2003.

    On 9x/ME, only standard (legacy) IDE/ATA devices 0-3 are supported.
    The driver SMARTVSD.VXD must be present in WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS
    to get loaded at Windows startup. The default location in a new
    installation of some versions of Windows is the WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder.
    In this case, move SMARTVSD.VXD to WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS and reboot
    (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/265854/en-us).
    SMARTVSD.VXD may also be missing in a new installation
    (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/199886/en-us).

    SMARTVSD.VXD relies on the standard IDE port driver ESDI_506.PDR.
    If the system uses a vendor specific driver, access of SMART data
    is not possible on 9x/ME. This is the case if e.g. the optional
    "IDE miniport driver" is installed on a system with VIA chipset.

    Some ATA controllers (e.g. Promise) provided a custom SMARTVSD.VXD
    for their Win9x/ME driver. To access SMART data from both the legacy
    (/dev/h[a-d]) and this additional (/dev/hd[e-h]) controller, rename
    this file to SMARTVSE.VXD. Open the file with a hex editor and replace
    all occurrences of the string "SMARTVSD" with "SMARTVSE". Then reinstall
    the original Windows SMARTVSD.VXD.

    On NT4/2000/XP/2003, ATA or SATA devices are supported if the device
    driver implements the SMART IOCTL.

    The IDE/ATA read log command (smartctl -l, --log, -a, --all) is
    not supported by the SMART IOCTL of NT4/2000/XP. Undocumented
    and possibly buggy system calls are used for this purpose,
    see WARNINGS file for details.

    SCSI devices are supported on all versions of Windows. An installed
    ASPI interface (WNASPI32.DLL) is required to access SCSI devices.
    The code was tested with Adaptec Windows ASPI drivers 4.71.2.
    (http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/support/scsi_soft/ASPI/ASPI-4.70/)
    Links to other ASPI drivers can be found at http://www.nu2.nu/aspi/.

    3ware 9000 RAID controllers are supported using new features available
    in the Windows driver release 9.4.0 (3wareDrv.sys 3.0.2.70) or later.
    Older drivers provide SMART access to the first physical drive (port)
    of each logical drive (unit). If driver support is not available
    (7000/8000 series, 9000 on XP 64), smartctl can be used to parse SMART
    data output from CLI or 3DM.

    G) MacOS/Darwin

    The code was tested on MacOS 10.3.4.  It should work from 10.3
    forwards.  It doesn't support 10.2.

    It's important to know that on 10.3.x, some things don't work
    (see WARNINGS): due to bugs in the libraries used, you cannot run
    a short test or switch SMART support off on a drive; if you try,
    you will just run an extended test or switch SMART support on.  So
    don't panic when your "short" test seems to be taking hours.

    It's also not possible at present to control when the offline
    routine runs. If your drive doesn't have it running automatically by
    default, you can't run it at all.

    SCSI devices are not currently supported.  Detecting the power
    status of a drive is also not currently supported.

    To summarize this, from another point of view, the things that
    are not supported fall into two categories:

   * Can't be implemented easily without more kernel-level support,
     so far as I know:
     - running immediate offline, conveyance, or selective tests
     - running any test in captive mode
     - aborting tests
     - switching automatic offline testing on or off
     - support for SCSI
     - checking the power mode [-n Directive of smartd] (this is not
       completely impossible, but not by using a documented API)

   * Work on 10.4 and later, but not on 10.3:
     - switching off SMART (switching *on* works fine)
     - switching off auto-save (but why would you want to?)
     - running the short test (that leaves you with only the extended test)

    However, some things do work well.  For ATA devices, all the
    informational output is available, unless you want something that only
    an offline test updates.  On many newer Mac OS systems, the
    hard drive comes with the offline test switched on by default, so
    even that works.

    H) OS/2, eComStation

    The code was tested on eComStation 1.1, but it should work on all versions
    of OS/2.
    Innotek LibC 0.5 runtime is required.
    Currently only ATA disks are supported, SCSI support will be added.

[2] Installing from SVN
=======================

    Get the sources from the SVN repository:
    svn co https://smartmontools.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/smartmontools/trunk/smartmontools smartmontools

    Then type:
    ./autogen.sh
    and continue with step [3] below, skipping the "unpack the tarball" step.

    The autogen.sh command is ONLY required when installing from
    SVN. You need GNU Autoconf (version 2.50 or greater), GNU Automake
    (version 1.7 or greater) and their dependencies installed in order
    to run it.  You can get these here:
    http://www.gnu.org/directory/GNU/autoconf.html
    http://www.gnu.org/directory/GNU/automake.html

[3] Installing from the source tarball
======================================

    If you are NOT installing from SVN, then unpack the tarball:
    tar zxvf smartmontools-5.VERSION.tar.gz

    Then:
    ./configure
    make
    make install (you may need to be root to do this)

    As shown (with no options to ./configure) this defaults to the
    following set of installation directories:   
    --prefix=/usr/local
    --sbindir=/usr/local/sbin
    --sysconfdir=/usr/local/etc
    --mandir=/usr/local/share/man
    --with-docdir=/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-VERSION
    --with-initscriptdir=/usr/local/etc/rc.d/init.d
    --disable-sample

    These will usually not overwrite existing "distribution" installations on
    Linux Systems since the FHS reserves this area for use by the system
    administrator.

    For different installation locations or distributions, simply add
    arguments to ./configure as shown in [4] below.

    If you wish to alter the default C compiler flags, set an
    environment variable CFLAGS='your options' before doing
    ./configure, or else do:
    make CFLAGS='your options'

    The first output line of smartctl and smartd provides information
    about release number, last SVN checkin date and revison, platform,
    and package. The latter defaults to "(local build)" and can be
    changed by the variable BUILD_INFO, for example:
    make BUILD_INFO='"(Debian 5.39-2)"'

[4] Guidelines for different Linux distributions
================================================

Note: Please send corrections/additions to:
smartmontools-support@lists.sourceforge.net

Debian:
  If you don't want to overwrite any distribution package, use:
  ./configure

Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS, http://www.pathname.com/fhs/):
  ./configure --sbindir=/usr/local/sbin                               \
              --sysconfdir=/usr/local/etc                             \
              --mandir=/usr/local/man                                 \
              --with-initscriptdir=/usr/local/etc/rc.d/init.d         \
              --with-docdir=/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-VERSION

Red Hat:
  ./configure --sbindir=/usr/sbin                               \
              --sysconfdir=/etc                                 \
              --mandir=/usr/share/man                           \
              --with-initscriptdir=/etc/rc.d/init.d             \
              --with-docdir=/usr/share/doc/smartmontools-VERSION

Slackware:
  If you don't want to overwrite any "distribution" package, use:
  ./configure

  Otherwise use:
  ./configure --sbindir=/usr/sbin                               \
              --sysconfdir=/etc                                 \
              --mandir=/usr/share/man                           \
              --with-initscriptdir=/etc/rc.d                    \
              --with-docdir=/usr/share/doc/smartmontools-VERSION

  And
  removepkg smartmontools smartsuite (only root can do this)
  before make install

  The init script works on Slackware. You just have to add an entry like
  the following in /etc/rc.d/rc.M or /etc/rc.d/rc.local:

  if [ -x /etc/rc.d/smartd ]; then
    . /etc/rc.d/smartd start
  fi

  To disable it:
  chmod 644 /etc/rc.d/smartd

  For a list of options:
  /etc/rc.d/smartd

SuSE:
  ./configure --sbindir=/usr/sbin                                        \
              --sysconfdir=/etc                                          \
              --mandir=/usr/share/man                                    \
              --with-initscriptdir=/etc/init.d                           \
              --with-docdir=/usr/share/doc/packages/smartmontools-VERSION

[5] Guidelines for FreeBSD
==========================
  To match the way it will installed when it becomes available as a PORT, use
  the following:

  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local                                      \
              --with-initscriptdir=/usr/local/etc/rc.d/                \
              --with-docdir=/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-VERSION \
              --enable-sample

  NOTE: --enable-sample will cause the smartd.conf and smartd RC files to
  be installed with the string '.sample' append to the name, so you will end
  up with the following:
        /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf.sample
        /usr/local/etc/rc.d/smartd.sample


[6] Guidelines for Darwin
=========================
  ./configure --with-initscriptdir=/Library/StartupItems

  If you'd like to build the i386 version on a powerpc machine, you can
  use

  CXX='g++ -isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk -arch i386' \
    ./configure --host=i386-apple-darwin \
                --with-initscriptdir=/Library/StartupItems

[7] Guidelines for NetBSD/OpenBSD
=================================
  ./configure --prefix=/usr/pkg                                       \
              --with-docdir=/usr/pkg/share/doc/smartmontools

  On OpenBSD, it is important that you use GNU make (gmake from 
  /usr/ports/devel/gmake) to build smartmontools, as the BSD make doesn't
  know how to make the manpages.

[8] Guidelines for Solaris
==========================

    smartmontools has been partially but not completely ported to
    Solaris.  It includes complete SCSI support but no ATA or 3ware
    support.  It can be compiled with either CC (Sun's C++ compiler)
    or GNU g++.

    To compile with g++:

    ./configure [args]
    make

    To compile with Sun CC:

    env CC=cc CXX=CC ./configure [args]
    make

    The correct arguments [args] to configure are:
     --sbindir=/usr/sbin                                \
     --sysconfdir=/etc                                  \
     --mandir=/usr/share/man                            \
     --with-docdir=/usr/share/doc/smartmontools-VERSION \
     --with-initscriptdir=/etc/init.d

    To start the script automatically on bootup, create hardlinks that
    indicate when to start/stop in:
                    /etc/rc[S0123].d/
    pointing to /etc/init.d/smartd. Create:
            K<knum>smartd in rcS.d, rc0.d, rc1.d, rc2.d
            S<snum>smartd in rc3.d
    where <knum> is related to <snum> such that the higher snum is the
    lower knum must be.

    On usual configuration, '95' would be suitable for <snum> and '05'
    for <knum> respectively.  If you choose these value, you can
    create hardlinks by:

    cd /etc
    sh -c 'for n in S 0 1 2; do ln init.d/smartd rc$n.d/K05smartd; done'
    sh -c 'for n in 3      ; do ln init.d/smartd rc$n.d/S95smartd; done'

[9] Guidelines for Cygwin
=========================

Same as Red Hat:
  ./configure --prefix=/usr                 \
              --sysconfdir=/etc             \
              --mandir='${prefix}/share/man'

  OR EQUIVALENTLY
  ./configure --sbindir=/usr/sbin                               \
              --sysconfdir=/etc                                 \
              --mandir=/usr/share/man                           \
              --with-initscriptdir=/etc/rc.d/init.d             \
              --with-docdir=/usr/share/doc/smartmontools-VERSION

  Using DOS text file type as default for the working directories ("textmode"
  mount option) is not recommended. Building the binaries and man pages using
  "make" is possible, but "make dist" and related targets work only with UNIX
  file type ("binmode" mount option) set. The "autogen.sh" script prints a
  warning if DOS type is selected.

  If installing from SVN, you may check out all files either with CR/LF
  or LF line endings. Starting with release 3.1-7, Cygwin's bash does no
  longer accept scripts with CR/LF by default. To run the initial script
  ./autogen.sh checked out with CR/LF on a "binmode" mount, type:

  bash -O igncr ./autogen.sh

  instead. This is not necessary for the generated ./configure script.

[10] Guidelines for Windows
===========================

To compile the Windows release with MinGW gcc on MSYS, use:

  ./configure
  make

  Instead of using "make install", copy the .exe files into
  some directory in the PATH.

To compile with MinGW gcc 3.x on Cygwin, use:

  ./configure --build=i686-pc-mingw32

  The above does not work if gcc 4.x is installed and selected as
  default by /usr/sbin/alternatives.  If the configure command aborts
  with error message '... does not support -mno-cygwin', select
  gcc 3.x by:

  CC=gcc-3 CXX=g++-3 ./configure --build=i686-pc-mingw32

  Alternatively, a MinGW-targeted cross-compiler can be used if available:

  ./configure --build=i686-pc-cygwin --host=i686-pc-mingw32


To build the Windows binary distribution, use:

  make dist-win32

  This builds the distribution in directory

  ./smartmontools-VERSION.win32/

  and packs it into

  ./smartmontools-VERSION.win32.zip

To create a Windows installer, use:

  make installer-win32

  This builds the distribution directory and packs it into the
  self-extracting install program

  ./smartmontools-VERSION.win32-setup.exe

  The installer is build using the command "makensis" from the NSIS
  package. See http://nsis.sourceforge.net/ for documentation and
  download location.

To both create and run the (interactive) installer, use:

  make install-win32

  Additional make targets are distdir-win32 to build the directory
  only and cleandist-win32 for cleanup.

  The binary distribution includes all documentation files converted
  to DOS text file format and *.html and *.txt preformatted man pages.
  The tools unix2dos.exe (package cygutils) and zip.exe (package zip
  or a native Win32 release of Info-ZIP, http://www.info-zip.org) are
  necessary but may be not installed by Cygwin's default settings.

To prepare os_win32 directory for MSVC8, use the following on Cygwin:

  mkdir vctmp && cd vctmp
  ../configure --build=mingw32
  make config-vc8

  The MSVC8 project files (os_win32/smartmontools_vc8.sln,
  os_win32/smart{ctl,d}_vc8.vcproj) are included in SVN (but not in
  source tarball). The target config-vc8 from a Makefile configured
  for MinGW creates os_win32/{config,svnversion}_vc8.h from
  ./{config,svnversion}.h. The configure skript must be run outside
  of the source directory to avoid inclusion of the original config.h.

  Unlike MinGW, MSVC can also be used to build the syslog message file
  tool syslogevt.exe. See smartd man page for usage information about
  this tool.


[11] Guidelines for OS/2, eComStation
=====================================

To compile the OS/2 code, please run

  ./os_os2/configure.os2
  make
  make install

[12] Guidelines for OpenBSD
==========================
  To match the way it will installed when it becomes available as a PORT, use
  the following:

  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local                                      \
              --sysconfdir=/etc
              --with-initscriptdir=/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-VERSION \
              --with-docdir=/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-VERSION \
              --enable-sample

  It is important that you use GNU make (gmake from /usr/ports/devel/gmake)
  to build smartmontools, as the default OpenBSD make doesn't know how to build
  the man pages.

  NOTE1: --with-initscriptdir installs a SystemV startup script.  It really
  should be --without-initscriptdir, but the Makefile code is incorrect and
  trys to install the initscript (smartd) to /no.  So, an interim fix it to
  set the initscript dir to the doc dir.

  NOTE2: --enable-sample will cause the smartd.conf and smartd RC files to
  be installed with the string '.sample' append to the name, so you will end
  up with the following:
        /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf.sample
        /usr/local/etc/rc.d/smartd.sample

[13] Comments
============

To compile from another directory, you can replace the step
  ./configure [options]
by the following:
  mkdir objdir
  cd objdir
  ../configure [options]

To install to another destination (used mainly by package maintainers,
or to examine the package contents without risk of modifying any
system files) you can replace the step:
  make install
with:
  make DESTDIR=/home/myself/smartmontools-package install

Use a full path. Paths like ~/smartmontools-package may not work.

After installing smartmontools, you can read the man pages, and try
out the commands:
   
man smartd.conf
man smartctl
man smartd

/usr/sbin/smartctl -s on -o on -S on /dev/hda (only root can do this)
/usr/sbin/smartctl -a /dev/hda (only root can do this)

Note that the default location for the manual pages are
/usr/share/man/man5 and /usr/share/man/man8.  If "man" doesn't find
them, you may need to add /usr/share/man to your MANPATH environment
variable.

Source and binary RPM packages are available at
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=64297

Refer to http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/index.html#howtodownload
for any additional download and installation instructions.

The following files are installed if ./configure has no options:

/usr/local/sbin/smartd                                  [Executable daemon]
/usr/local/sbin/smartctl                                [Executable command-line utility]
/usr/local/etc/smartd.conf                              [Configuration file for smartd daemon]
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/init.d/smartd                       [Init/Startup script for smartd]
/usr/local/share/man/man5/smartd.conf.5                 [Manual page]
/usr/local/share/man/man8/smartctl.8                    [Manual page]
/usr/local/share/man/man8/smartd.8                      [Manual page]
/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-5.X/AUTHORS          [Information about the authors and developers]
/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-5.X/CHANGELOG        [A log of changes. Also see SVN]
/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-5.X/COPYING          [GNU General Public License Version 2]
/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-5.X/INSTALL          [Installation instructions: what you're reading!]
/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-5.X/NEWS             [Significant bugs discovered in old versions]
/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-5.X/README           [Overview]
/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-5.X/TODO             [Things that need to be done/fixed]
/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-5.X/WARNINGS         [Systems where lockups or other serious problems were reported]
/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-5.X/smartd.conf      [Example configuration file for smartd]
/usr/local/share/doc/smartmontools-5.X/examplescripts   [Executable scripts for -M exec of smartd.conf (4 files)]

The commands:

make htmlman
make txtman

may be used to build .html and .txt preformatted man pages.
These are used by the dist-win32 make target to build the Windows
distribution.
The commands also work on other operating system configurations
if suitable versions of man2html, groff and grotty are installed.
On systems without man2html, the following command should work
if groff is available:

make MAN2HTML='groff -man -Thtml' htmlman


Some of the source files are prepared for the documentation
generator Doxygen (http://www.doxygen.org/). If Doxygen is installed,
the command:

doxygen

creates HTML documentation in doc/html and LaTeX documentation
in doc/latex. If TeX is installed, the following command creates
a documentation file doc/latex/refman.pdf:

( cd doc/latex && make pdf )


[14] Detailed description of arguments to configure command
===========================================================

When you type:
./configure [options]
there are six particularly important variables that affect where the
smartmontools software is installed.  The variables are listed here,
with their default values in square brackets, and the quantities that
they affect described following that.  This is a very wide table: please read
it in a wide window.

OPTIONS              DEFAULT                                      AFFECTS
-------              -------                                      -------
--prefix             /usr/local                                   Please see below
--sbindir            ${prefix}/sbin                               Directory for smartd/smartctl executables;
                                                                  Contents of smartd/smartctl man pages
--mandir             ${prefix}/share/man                          Directory for smartctl/smartd/smartd.conf man pages
--sysconfdir         ${prefix}/etc                                Directory for smartd.conf;
                                                                  Contents of smartd executable;
                                                                  Contents of smartd/smartd.conf man pages;
                                                                  Directory for rc.d/init.d/smartd init script
--with-initscriptdir  ${sysconfdir}/init.d/rc.d                   Location of init scripts
--with-docdir         ${prefix}/share/doc/smartmontools-5.X       Location of the documentation
--enable-sample       --disable-sample                            Adds the string '.sample' to the names of the smartd.conf file and the smartd RC file
--with-os-deps        os_<guessed>.o                              OS dependent module(s)
--with-selinux        <not set>                                   Enables SELinux support.  If smartmontools has to create the /dev/tw[ae] device
                                                                  nodes for 3ware/AMCC controllers, this option ensures that the nodes are created
                                                                  with correct SELinux file contexts.
--enable-drivedb      --disable-drivedb                           Enables default drive database file '${drivedbdir}/drivedb.h'
--with-drivedbdir     ${prefix}/share/smartmontools/drivedb.h     Directory for 'drivedb.h' (specifying this option implies --enable-drivedb)
--enable-savestates   --disable-savestates                        Enables default smartd state files '${savestates}MODEL-SERIAL.ata.state'
--with-savestates     ${prefix}/var/lib/smartmontools/smartd.     Prefix for smartd state files (specifying this option implies --enable-savestates)

Here's an example:
If you set --prefix=/home/joe and none of the other four
variables then the different directories that are used would be:
--sbindir             /home/joe/sbin
--mandir              /home/joe/share/man
--sysconfdir          /home/joe/etc
--with-initscriptdir  /home/joe/etc/init.d/rc.d
--with-docdir         /home/joe/doc/smartmontools-5.X

This is useful for test installs in a harmless subdirectory somewhere.

Here are the four possible cases for the four variables above:

Case 1:
--prefix not set
--variable not set
===> VARIABLE gets default value above

Case 2:
--prefix set
--variable not set
===> VARIABLE gets PREFIX/ prepended to default value above

Case 3:
--prefix not set
--variable set
===> VARIABLE gets value that is set

Case 4:
--prefix is set
--variable is set
===> PREFIX is IGNORED, VARIABLE gets value that is set


Here are the differences with and without --enable-sample, assuming
no other options specified (see above for details)

Case 1:
--enable-sample provided
==> Files installed are:
        /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf.sample
        /usr/local/etc/rc.d/init.d/smartd.sample

Case 2:
--disable-sample provided or parameter left out
==> Files installed are:
        /usr/local/etc/smartd.conf
        /usr/local/etc/rc.d/init.d/smartd

Additional information about using configure can be found here:
http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.57/html_mono/autoconf.html#SEC139