Temperature Widget

m4f1050

OK, finally got the coretemp.ko installed, etc. and now have a temperature reading of a cool 35C

Was a little bit involved, because OS X doesn't grok BSD's file system, so I ended up doing a memory stick, mounting it on the pfSense box, and then copied it with an slogin over to where it needs to go.

The config file I ended up editing with the Web GUI, because I couldn't remember the name of the non-vi editor installed on pfSense, it's not nano or pico, and of course not emacs (which I usually would use)
Why the heck keep I forgetting the name? ???

Anyway, things are working. Now it's going to be interesting to see what get's stomped over with the next upgrade that I'm just running….

I enabled SSH on pfSense and I connect from both Win7 and OS X. What I do on OS X is open a terminal shell and type "ssh 192.168.0.1 -l admin" it will then ask me for a password. On Win7 I use putty. After that when I get to the menu on pfSense I select option 8, and on pfSense's shell I ftp to my machine and transfer files that way. I also use nano "pkg_add -r nano"

…finally back on hsdpa :)

I think we agree that we have different installations all over the world.
And so we have special needs to handle. One might need to use a coretemp module (or acpi or mbmon) , on another system it crashes.

We cant force everyone to acpi or coretemp. We need to support the freedom for everyone, to use what he needs to as long as this doesnt hit the freedom of another one.

For this reason, the current plan for the widget is to support mbmon, acpi and coretemp
and to implement a config screen for us users, so we can select the sensors we need.

rcfa

@ThorstenK:

For this reason, the current plan for the widget is to support mbmon, acpi and coretemp
and to implement a config screen for us users, so we can select the sensors we need.

Not like I care, but what about amdtemp.ko ?

lets see "coretemp" as a symbol for Processor specific modules.
Its not about the name, its about the freedom of the admin to install what he needs to support special requirements.

rcfa

@ThorstenK:

lets see "coretemp" as a symbol for Processor specific modules.
Its not about the name, its about the freedom of the admin to install what he needs to support special requirements.

OK :)

On a different note: still have trouble believing that my tiny D510 Atom CPU truly runs at 31-34C, when I have an ambient temperature in the 24C range, and Tmax. is at 100C, and the CPU has only passive cooling. If it were ambient temperature inside the computer case that's 10C above outside ambient temp, I'd buy that. But in the CPU core?
Did someone mention this needs to be multiplied by the number of cores? That would be much more like it: 62-68C would be a temperature that's well below the Tmax, but in a range that would seem more believable. Or did technology really get that good? :-\ ::) ??? :o

Interesting - according to the thermal guide at intel.com the value depends on the quality of the external temp sensor on the motherboard.
and that some offset should be applied on top of this value. Oh, nice - it will pause and resume itself automatically, when a critical temperature is reached.

Personally, i think that most cpu temperature problems are a result of to much overclocking / feeding to much voltage / not supplying an aprrociate fan. The atom series is quite efficient so it seems that your cpu is healthy :=)

(Which i should take as an example and finally quit smoking cigarettes….)

joe_cowboy

Has anybody added these updates to github for merge? I will admit I am the one that enabled the temp in the system widget when fixing issues when pfsense 2.1 was released for testing. Part of the code was there, just disabled but I enabled it for a friend of mine. Let me know if you want your code to be posted on github to see if I can get it merged with 2.1 updates.

Here is where I talk about the Temp add on…
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,44183.msg232657.html#msg232657

For some reason I can't get my VIA chipset to display any temperature OID info. HP/NEOWare thin client box. I think it's a BIOS issue.

-Joe Cowboy

rcfa

@joe_cowboy:

Let me know if you want your code to be posted on github to see if I can get it merged with 2.1 updates.

For me the temperature stuff seems to work out of the box, provided the coretemp.ko is installed and loaded.
So having the temperature modules in /boot would be quite helpful, somewhere a toggle that enables/disables the loading of the module, if people think that just loading it by default is a bad idea.

w0w

I have D2500CC Intel board (Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU D2500 @ 1.86GHz )
My current snapshot is based on FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE-p6. I've tried coretemp and mbmon with no luck, I can't see temperatures at all, any suggestions would be great!

hoi - providing the different temperature modules in /boot would help greatly as systctl needs them.
joe Cowboy, do you plan to commit these ?

Edit: or does anyone know, if we want to compile them while building ?
Another option is to let the User decide, as the author of mbmon says that permanently polling the io ports directly can affect system stability.

As for the patch - I nearly finished the widgets code today and test with a cat on a local file cause im using acpi which runs fine and stable for me.
I have some outstanding rl work in the next two days but if anyone's interested in testing i can post a patch by wednesday here.

stephenw10

@rcfa:

On a different note: still have trouble believing that my tiny D510 Atom CPU truly runs at 31-34C

The coretemp temperature is notoriously unreliable in absolute terms. The figure returned by the CPU is a number related to the difference between the current temperature and the TJmax, the maximum allowable junction temperature. Unfortunately TJmax varies between CPUs and most are not known. If you look through the output from coretemp you will probably see something like:
TJmax unknown, assuming 100°C. The atom has a high TJmax as it's intended for laptops, thus the difference figure is larger and a lower absolute value is shown. (Edit: In fact is does seem to be 100°C for the D510 but get the idea! ::))

It's possible to tell it what TJmax should be to get a more accurate reading. However the biggest advantage to having this figure on the dashboard is so you can see relative temperature. When a blade falls off your fan you will see a rise!

Steve

Hi all - i have a question regarding repetition and backward references in PCCRE - Maybe there are some skilled regexp fans out there…

the following regexp works:


preg_match("/^Temp.=\s(.*);.*/",$arr_mbmon_raw[0],$arr_mbmon); // substr sensor
$arr_mbmon = preg_split("/[, ]+/",$arr_mbmon[1]); // get sensors
...

I will leave it as is, cause its more readable - but does anyone now how to solve that just with a preg_match, backward refs and quantifiers in a scalable way ?

q2 -> i think that we have to do a telnet on the mbmon provided port - since i doesnt have a machine wherer mbmon runs - could anyone that wants mbmon to run provide the output of a telnet to his mbmon port ?

hanD - Tho

jimp

FYI- coretemp and amdtemp are in the builds now. I'm not sure if there is a reliable way to detect support and auto-load the modules, if anyone has an idea, I'm open to suggestions. (And no, loading both all the time is not an option :-)

rcfa

@jimp:

FYI- coretemp and amdtemp are in the builds now. I'm not sure if there is a reliable way to detect support and auto-load the modules, if anyone has an idea, I'm open to suggestions. (And no, loading both all the time is not an option :-)

How about settings in the Advanced Setup Misc. tab that will add/remove the proper line to the boot config file?

jimp

Well manual setting is always an option, but automatic would be even better…

:-)

Otherwise, yes, a setting above/below powerd to select it would be possible. It would really be just about the same as the new code for crypto module I just committed.

wallabybob

@jimp:

FYI- coretemp and amdtemp are in the builds now. I'm not sure if there is a reliable way to detect support and auto-load the modules, if anyone has an idea, I'm open to suggestions. (And no, loading both all the time is not an option :-)

Various invocations of the CPUID instruction return a string identifying the CPU vendor, CPU features and instruction set options implemented. All this is reported in startup output though not in a concise form for easy parsing. On Linux the file /proc/cpuinfo reports this information in a cleanly structured way. Perhaps the FreeBSD proc filesystem does something similar.

Alternatively, I expect a few hours trolling through the appropriate Intel Architecture Reference Manual (and maybe the equivalent AMD document) and a bit of C nous would result in a program to issue shell commands to load the appropriate kernel modules on systems with the appropriate features.

jimp

You cat get the features from /var/run/dmesg.boot, assuming it actually shows up there.

If it does, it should be easy.

wallabybob

@jimp:

You cat get the features from /var/run/dmesg.boot, assuming it actually shows up there.

/var/log/dmesg.boot on my system.

On my system:

[2.1-BETA0][admin@pfsense2.test.example.org]/root(2): more /var/log/dmesg.boot
Copyright 1992-2012 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE-p2 #1: Sun Jun 10 18:19:17 EDT 2012
root@FreeBSD_8.3_pfSense_2.1.snaps.pfsense.org:/usr/obj./usr/pfSensesrc/src/sys/pfSense_SMP.8 i386
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: VIA Samuel 2 (797.74-MHz 686-class CPU)
Origin = "CentaurHauls" Id = 0x673 Family = 6 Model = 7 Stepping = 3
Features=0x803035

On more modern CPUs there will be more Features lines.

The string value of Origin will be "GenuineIntel" (case may be different) on Intel CPUs and "AuthenticAMD" (case may be different) on AMD CPUs.

Perhaps you could post the equivalent lines from a system with AES so I can check the reported features and the kernel code and Architecture manual to see the feature names for AES instructions and CPU core thermometer.

jimp

Well if you want to get fancy… (thought there doesn't seem to be an equivalent in php...)

https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-head/blob/master/sys/dev/coretemp/coretemp.c#L118

mr_bobo

The temp widget doesn't show on my Dell pfSense box with a 2.66GHz P4 and I'm under the impression you can't get a Dell Dimension to show CPU temp due to hardware limitations.

My desktop is a Dell 4600 with a 2.8GHz P4 running FreeBSD 9.0 and I've installed every port available for it and ran every command I could come up with in an attempt to get it to show CPU temp to no avail.

My laptop is a Sony Vaio running the same OS and GKrellM has the option to show the temp for it's CPU's but the same option isn't available on the Dell.

As for some of the high temperatures mentioned, my Gateway laptop with a 1.2GHz Celeron running FreeBSD 7.4 would exit and shut down as a safety feature if it reached 105C. My Sony usually stays at or under 50C.