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Date:      Tue, 15 Jan 2002 05:45:51 -0500
From:      Brian T.Schellenberger <bts@babbleon.org>
To:        "Stan Brown" <stanb@awod.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: System health mnitoring
Message-ID:  <09e861746100f12FE6@Mail6.nc.rr.com>
In-Reply-To: <200201141603.g0EG31J20642@smtp1.domainit.com>
References:  <200201141603.g0EG31J20642@smtp1.domainit.com>

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On Monday 14 January 2002 11:02 am, Stan Brown wrote:
> On Sun Jan 13 21:54:08 2002 Brian T.Schellenberger wrote...
>
> >On Sunday 13 January 2002 01:37 pm, Stan Brown wrote:
> >> I have a new machine that I'm installing FreeBSD STABLE on. In the BIOS
> >> I can see various temps,voltages, & rpms. I want to be able to monitor
> >> these at runtime.
> >>
> >> I'v played around with the healthd port without much success. I'v added
> >> the lines sugested in it's man page to the kernel conf, and rebuilt the
> >> kernel, but I'm not getting most of the readings, and what ones I am
> >> getting are wrong.
> >>
> >> Here is what I beleive to be the approriate line from dmesg about the
> >> appropriate hardware:
> >>
> >> chip1: <VIA 82C686 ACPI interface> at device 7.4 on pci0
> >>
> >> How can I make this work?
> >
> >It'll work just fine . . . by next year.  ACPI isn't supported yet in
> >production FeeBSD.
>
> Thanks for taking the time to reply.
>
> Forgive me for my lack of knowledge in this area, but I;ve never ahd a
> amchine with this health monitoring functionality before.
>
> So, what you are saying is the ACPI is what I need? Can you point me to any
> place to read more about this?

Yes, ACPI is what that line is referring to; it's a "new, improved" version 
of APM that provides a greater level of control to the O/S over the laptop 
power-related functions.  So if you are correct that that line is what you 
need, it's ACPI that you need.

> Also, is it working in CURRENT? I've never had a CURRENT machine beofre,
> would this be worth considering?

Yes, it works in CURRENT.  Mostly, anyway.  At least that's my understanding. 
 Whether that's worth considering depends on how vital it is that the machine 
be stable and how vital it is that the machine support this ACPI 
functionality (such as health monitoring).  Current is of course like 
pre-alpha; it is always recommended that you not use it on production 
machines or machines where it's vital that all of your data isn't destroyed 
on a semi-regular basis.

In practice, however, many people do run current quite successfully for a 
long time on production machines; at my company (which shall remain nameless) 
we had a number of production machines running current last year for many 
months because there were features in the currnet that we really needed.  
They've since been MFC'ed and we've switched them to stable.

The secret here is to have a "throwaway" machine where you can download & 
stest current, and to subscribe to the current mailing list and to grab a 
copy of current on a good day and test it a while before comitting to use it 
on a regular basis.

And most of the time, current is a lot more stable than the official claims 
might indicate, but it's definately not guaranteed, and there *are* times 
when it's very bad.

DISCLAIMER:  Everything written here about current is based on what I've read 
and discussions I've had with other people.  I have never personally 
installed it on any of my machines, though I have run on machines where it 
was installed with no noticable side effects.

Also, I don't believe that any packages are built for current, just ports, 
and I'm not sure how guaranteed ports are to work with current for that 
matter.  They are primarily geared to stable.

I'm posting this back to the list so people can jump all over me & correct 
the above if it's way off-base.


>
> I've been using FreebSD for several years, and am failry comfortable with
> cvsup'ing, and make buildowlrds etc.

That would be good since it would be the only way to run current so that 
would be one roadblock that wouldn't give you trouble.

-- 
Brian T. Schellenberger . . . . . . .   
Brian, the man from Babble-On . . . .   bts@babbleon.org (personal)
                                        http://www.babbleon.org

-------> Free Dmitry Sklyarov!  (let him go home)  <-----------

http://www.eff.org                 http://www.programming-freedom.org 

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