From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Sep 11 10:47:40 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 80A021065688 for ; Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:47:40 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jdc@koitsu.dyndns.org) Received: from QMTA02.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net (qmta02.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net [76.96.30.24]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5D8DF8FC13 for ; Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:47:40 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jdc@koitsu.dyndns.org) Received: from OMTA03.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net ([76.96.30.27]) by QMTA02.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net with comcast id DNnR1a0040b6N64A2NngF5; Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:47:40 +0000 Received: from koitsu.dyndns.org ([67.180.253.227]) by OMTA03.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net with comcast id DNne1a0064v8bD78PNnfw5; Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:47:39 +0000 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.0 c=1 a=-PxM-T6eSjQA:10 a=wx43BJ9xnxcA:10 a=1TPBueD4AAAA:8 a=6I5d2MoRAAAA:8 a=QycZ5dHgAAAA:8 a=SL-tyMANQKcHPI77H2UA:9 a=2oXVvhBIWp5Us5YsKeUA:7 a=emzQhnnXtnCKCufr-6dUyOm3a_sA:4 a=EoioJ0NPDVgA:10 a=SV7veod9ZcQA:10 a=LY0hPdMaydYA:10 Received: by icarus.home.lan (Postfix, from userid 1000) id BDF5917B81A; Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:47:38 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:47:38 -0700 From: Jeremy Chadwick To: Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz> Message-ID: <20080911104738.GA25493@icarus.home.lan> References: <48C847DE.7040508@incunabulum.net> <20080911043326.GA19290@icarus.home.lan> <48C8EA38.6090903@quip.cz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <48C8EA38.6090903@quip.cz> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) Cc: FreeBSD stable Subject: Re: Intel ICH7 SMBus support, ichsmb(4) X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:47:40 -0000 On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 11:51:52AM +0200, Miroslav Lachman wrote: > Are you still actively working on bsdhwmon and do you plan to support > non-Supermicro servers? Yes, I'm still actively working on it -- it is in no way shape or form a dead project. Most of the delays of releasing the software are caused by the following: * No man page or decent documentation -- this is a big show-stopper for me. I hate writing man pages (I write them by hand; I do not believe in using irritating tools to try and do the work for me), and writing one takes quite a bit of time to continually look up troff syntax and what not, * Code comments need to be added and cleaned up -- I need to document my functions better so anyone examining the source can understand it, * Badly-written Makefile with lots of hard-coded settings and options -- I need someone with better familiarity with Make to assist in cleaning this up, * Supermicro not providing me some necessary details (such as how to deal with the 5VCC/5VDD bug on some motherboards), resulting in that specific voltage being calculated wrong -- I've looked at the Linux lm-sensors project to try and get answers, but their code is absolute spaghetti and heavily abstracted, * Many testers not getting back to me with results of their tests -- I've mailed many of the ones who wanted to test, but got no response from them, indicating they lack time or lost interest in helping, * Some users requesting additional features too soon, such as: support for a configuration file, customisable output, and ISA I/O port support. I suppose a lot of these could be addressed if I released the code in a preliminary fashion (providing folks the ability to help me with documentation, etc.). Hmm... Yeah, I should really get a beta tarball up, and/or make a FreeBSD port for it already (since I am a ports committer). Also, I recently discovered that at EuroBSDCon, Constantine Murenin will be giving a talk about the OpenBSD Hardware Sensors Framework: http://2008.eurobsdcon.org/talks.html. This makes me makes me wonder if the project is being re-considered for FreeBSD (it was committed to CURRENT in October 2007 and then backed out after being referred to as a "festering junkpile that does not belong in the kernel", reference: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/cvs-src/2007-October/082398.html). If it is being reconsidered, I think it would make *much* more sense for me to spend my time getting ICHx SMBus support working under that, since the framework provides an interface for me to work with. To answer your 2nd question: yes, I plan on supporting other motherboards and products. The reason that is on hold/back-burner is: * I have contacts at Supermicro who can provide me full register details and provide overall support/help when I need it. I have none of this with Sun, nVidia, IBM, nor Intel. I can assure you that if I mail the general "Technical Support" lists these companies have, the support folks will /dev/null my mails, or simply go "What is this? SMBus slave hardware chip what? What the hell is that? Whatever..." and ignore the mail because it's outside of the norm. I do not believe in "randomly probing the SMBus" to try and find things by trial and error -- the risks are huge! People don't realise that reading registers can cause interrupts or features to be reset or disabled on the chip, which could cause the entire machine (or maybe just the SMBus layer) to lock up. I can assure you none of the bsdhwmon testers will put up with those risks, as most of them are doing testing on actual production servers and are trusting my "play it safe" judgement... * I want to get a good, solid list of Supermicro servers officially supported before moving on to a mix-match of other hardware. I do have very basic support for an AMD-based H/W monitoring chip used in a Supermicro board, but there's no SMBus driver available on FreeBSD for that chipset, so bsdhwmon can't work with it. > I wrote you an e-mail in June about my interest in testing thist > project on my servers, but got no reply. Hmm... I've looked through my mail archives for all of 2008, and I don't see any mail from you pertaining to bsdhwmon. I do see other mails (discussing GRUB, ATA problems, etc.) but nothing about bsdhwmon. I was grepping for 'Miroslav', looking specifically in my mailbox dedicated for koitsu@freebsd.org. Could you resend it? > I have some Sun Fire X2100 M2 (nVidia chips), IBM x335 (Intel), IBM x336 > (Intel) servers and one Supermicro X6DHP-8G (Intel) server. Thanks. I'll add these to my list of servers that I should try to focus on in the near future (since you have hardware available for testing), and mark you down as the contact I should refer to for help/testing. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |