How to trigger Offline data collection with Smartmontools?

Question

I just purchased a new SSD and I'm trying to figure out how to monitor the expected lifetime of it. When I run

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda

it reports

...
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x80) **Offline data collection activity
                    was never started**.
...

Furthermore I note that some of the statistics are indicated to be updated "Always" or "Offline":

$ sudo smartctl -data -A /dev/sda
...
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE    
...    
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   100   001    Old_age   **Offline**      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   100   100   001    Old_age   **Always**       -       0
202 **Perc_Rated_Life_Used**    0x0018   100   100   001    Old_age   **Offline**      -       0
206 Write_Error_Rate        0x000e   100   100   001    Old_age   **Always**       -       0

Does this mean that the "Offline" stats are not up-to-date?

Will the "Offline" stats update themselves with time, or need I trigger them to update somehow?

I am particularly interested in the value indicating the lifetime of the SSD, "Perc_Rated_Life_Used", which is labeled as "Offline".

Using the --offlineauto=on flag (credit to Michael Krell's suggestion below) as so:

sudo smartctl --offlineauto=on -a /dev/sda

produces a new output section:

=== START OF ENABLE/DISABLE COMMANDS SECTION ===
SMART Automatic Offline Testing Enabled **every four hours**.

However, the smart data section still reports:

Offline data collection status:  (0x80) Offline data collection activity
                                 **was never started**.

This is on a newly updated Ubuntu 13.1016.04 system.

Solution 1

According to the smartmontools site:

Note that a one-time offline test can also be carried out immediately upon receipt of a user command. See the -t offline option, which causes a one-time offline test to be carried out immediately.

So, executing:

sudo smartctl -t offline /dev/sda

updates the smart data section to:

Offline data collection status:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity
                                 was completed without error.

Problem solved.

Solution 2

referring to the smartmontools site:

Column Updated
Some SMART attributes values, that are updated only during off-line data collection activities are labeled "Offline" in column "UPDATED".

How to enable "Offline data collection":

smartctl --offlineauto=on

Comments

[binga30]

Thanks, this would seem like a good idea, but does not have the expected result on my system. Please see updated question above.