saftemon reads disk enclosure status information from SAF-TE (SCSI Accessible Fault Tolerant Enclosures). SAF-TE is a component of SES (SCSI Enclosure Services) which is common on most SCSI disk enclosures these days. saftemon can monitor multiple SAF-TE devices and will automatically detect them.

The information retrieved includes power supply, temperature, audible alarm, drive faults, array critical/failed/rebuilding state and door lock status. saftemon logs changes in the status of these enclosure elements to syslog and can optionally execute an alert help program with details of the component failure.