Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:50:15 +0200 From: Miroslav Lachman <000.fbsd@quip.cz> To: Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@FreeBSD.org> Cc: FreeBSD stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Intel ICH7 SMBus support, ichsmb(4) Message-ID: <48C905F7.5020306@quip.cz> In-Reply-To: <20080911104738.GA25493@icarus.home.lan> References: <48C847DE.7040508@incunabulum.net> <20080911043326.GA19290@icarus.home.lan> <48C8EA38.6090903@quip.cz> <20080911104738.GA25493@icarus.home.lan>
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Jeremy Chadwick wrote: > 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? re-sent with subject "[Fwd: bsdhwmon [was: Re: cpufreq broken on core2duo]]" >>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. Thank you for your time and for informations! As I have mostly Sun Fire X2100 M2 servers, I have one as spare / testing machine, where I can test potentially "dangerous" code, or give you full access with remote Java based KVM if needed (Sun eLOM). Miroslav Lachman
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