OpenBSD Journal

Detecting Hardware Changes with sensorsd

Contributed by jose on from the new-monitors dept.

Henning Brauer recently added a new bit of software to monitor your hardware. The components, called sensorsd , can be used to keep track of your hardware. The sensorsd utility retrieves hardware sensor monitoring data like fan speeds, temperatures and voltages, via sysctl(3). It uses syslog(3) to send an alert if they are out of the given limits. A configuration file, sensorsd.conf(5), is used to list what items to monitor. An example would be
     hw.sensors.0:high=80C
     hw.sensors.1:high=170F
     hw.sensors.2:low=4.8V:high=5.2V
     hw.sensors.3:low=1000:high=8000
This can be useful to monitor a machine's health, especially from keeping it from overheating. Remember that this is brand new code and still being developed, so you will probably find some bugs, and it's still being fleshed out. But, for the most part it works now.

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By Anonymous Coward () on

    Linux's equivalent, lm-sensors, is quite the hassle to set up, as you have to know what sensor hardware is present in your machine. Not to mention the i2c compatability problem, but let's not get into that...

    Anyway, what hardware does this package support? Does it auto-detect hardware?

    Comments
    1. By Michael () on

      Anyway, what hardware does this package support? Does it auto-detect hardware? I haven't looked through the source yet, but it looks like it has to be configured by hand. I could be wrong. lm_sensors apparently comes with a 'sensors-detect' utility, so I'm sure that such a utility is in the works. --Michael

    2. By Anonymous Coward () on

      the package itself doesn't support anything, it just reads sysctls that are made available by it(4), lm(4), viaenv(4)

    3. By Anonymous Coward () on

      >>> Anyway, what hardware does this package support? Does it auto-detect hardware?

      looks like:
      Sep 30 00:50:58 data sensorsd: startup, monitoring 13 sensors

      but thats all of output 8/
      some informations about the sensors would be great

      greetings

      Comments
    4. By Henning Brauer () henning@ on mailto:henning@

      it supports every hardware our kernel supports.
      e. g. everything you see when you type
      sysctl hw.sensors

      Comments
      1. By Michael van der Westhuizen () on

        This is a fantastic addition - congratulations.

    5. By RC () on

      EVERY piece of hardware is autodetected in OpenBSD... or hadn't you noticed that yet?

  2. By RC () on

    I'm surprised sensor support took as long as it did...

    Being able to detect when a fan has died, or a processor is overheating is a serious issue, that there really isn't any other solution to. I'm quite surprised it's been as long as it has (since mobo sensors became common) before this was introduced.

    I guess it's upgrade time...

    Comments
    1. By zil0g () on

      processors that don't auto-shutoff (like the athlon) will most likely burn before your sensors pop-up dialog pops up anyway.

      IMO it's just a neat gadget.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward () on

        Do they?

        I remember seeing a video of a cooler being taken off an Athlon during operation, followed by a whole lot of smoke. Then the same experiment with a P4, followed by and automatic shutdown, no smoke.

        But don't try this at home ;)

      2. By RC () on

        > will most likely burn before your sensors pop-up dialog pops up anyway.

        Why in the hell would that be? You have your temperature set to 200F/90C degrees?

        Me thinks you don't know what you are talking about.

      3. By Henning Brauer () henning@ on mailto:henning@

        > processors that don't auto-shutoff (like the
        > athlon) will most likely burn before your
        > sensors pop-up dialog pops up anyway.

        that is not true.
        I had CPU fans dieing in 4 1U units. they all were running Durons and Athlons.
        They ran at 90..110 degC for 6 months.
        All are still alive.

        one failed case fan, for example, doesn't mean your system goes down, but you want to know that so you can schedule a swap.
        or PS volatges going out of rangem that can be an indicator for a dieing PS, without causing immediate trouble.

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