WG x750e - automatic speed adjustment: mbmon going crazy

sthames42

Did you guys ever resolve this? I have exactly the same problem. Running mbmon returns reasonable temps for a while and suddenly starts reporting this:

Temp.= 255.0, 0.0, 0.0; Rot.= 0, 0, 0
Vcore = 4.08, 4.08; Volt. = 4.08, 6.85, 15.50, 6.07, 5.11

When I cancel mbmon and run it again, I get:

ioctl(smb0:open): No such file or directory
No Hardware Monitor found!!
InitMBInfo: Bad file descriptor

WGXepc -t reports good temps and then nothing but 255.
Only way to fix this is to reboot.
I'm assuming the SuperIO chip got itself hosed somehow. Is there any way to reset or reboot the chip?

This is on two X-Core 550e boxes and the default SL6N7 Banias chips have been replaced with SL7EP Dothan chips according to https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/PfSense_on_Watchguard_Firebox#Further_Enhancements_3.
All dip switches set correctly. No other changes (powerd/speedstep) were made.

stephenw10

No, or at least I haven't heard from anyone who did. However reading back through the data sheet there appear to be a number of possible things we could try. Since the chip is just giving results that are registers full of all 1s we don't know if it's actually returning anything or if we're even talking to it properly. Though it would seem likely we are because under mbmon the voltage readings continue to come back as reasonable numbers.
As a rather extreme option it looks like there is a register that can re-initialise the chip, back to it's power on defaults. However I've no way of knowing what registers are configured by the BIOS at boot so the results could be…. unpredictable. ;)

Steve

sthames42

Thanks for responding, Steve. I posted a new topic because this one was old and I wasn't sure it was still active. I'm happy to stay in this one.

This has happened on two boxes but I have another that works fine. I suppose it's possible that two of the Dothan chips I put in these boxes are creating this problem but it seem unlikely it would be two. I'm going to replace the replacement in one of them when another chip and wait for results.

Is the data sheet you spoke of available electronically? Where can I get it?

stephenw10

Yes, it's available in many places such as here.

Interacting with the chip manually for test purposes is a PITA. ::) It involves writing many individual registers to read one value. For example:
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=43574.msg261279#msg261279
The reset register will not require so much though. It would be interesting to install superiotool to see what has stopped and what is still readable when the chip enters it's uncooperative state. We may get a clue.

Steve

sthames42

Thanks, Steve.
I replaced the chip and have been running and watching mbmon for an hour. No problems. I guess it's possible I had two bad chips with the same symptoms. If the problem shows up again, I'll try your idea with superiotool. Until then, I'm moving on.
Thanks, again.

stephenw10

Hard to see how changing the CPU could make much difference. A change in the temperature sensor perhaps?
How that would affect the fan control though.

Steve

sthames42

Beats the crap out of me. Been watching mbmon for 2 1/2 hours and still working great.
I noticed that when I took out the other chip, I had smeared on a lot of paste (Arctic Silver). I was much more conservative with the new chip.
Could that have anything to do with this?

sthames42

Spoke too soon. It took 3 hours but mbmon started showing this:

Temp.= 255.0,  0.0,  0.0; Rot.=    0,    0,    0
Vcore = 4.08, 4.08; Volt. = 4.08, 6.85, 15.50,   6.07,  5.11

I guess I'll look into resetting the chip as you suggested.

stephenw10

Are you running bios B8? If so you can also get the temperature via ACPI on the dashboard or sysctl. Does that fail also?

Steve

sthames42

Looks like I'm running B6. Temps not available through ACPI.
The superio chip should be a Winbond, right? On other pictures of x550e boards, you can clearly see the Winbond logo. On this machine, the chip is covered with a Phoenix Technologies sticker. How can I determine what chip I have?

sthames42

This is what I get if I cancel mbmon and restart it:

[2.1.5-RELEASE]/root(50): mbmon -d -S
SMBus[Intel8XX(ICH/ICH2/ICH3/ICH4/ICH5/ICH6)] found, but No HWM available on it!!
InitMBInfo: Device not configured

stephenw10

They all have the Phoenix sticker on the Winbond chip, nothing unusual there. Superiotool will identify the chip.

Steve

sthames42

Ok, here's the superiotool dump before the problem:

superiotool r4.0-2827-g1a00cf0
Found Winbond W83627HF/F/HG/G (id=0x52, rev=0x41) at 0x2e
Register dump:
idx 02 20 21 22 23 24 25 26  28 29 2a 2b 2c 2e 2f
val ff 52 41 ff fe c0 00 00  00 00 fc c4 ff 00 ff
def 00 52 NA ff 00 MM 00 00  00 00 7c c0 00 00 00
LDN 0x00 (Floppy)
idx 30 60 61 70 74 f0 f1 f2  f4 f5
val 00 00 00 00 04 0e 00 ff  00 00
def 01 03 f0 06 02 0e 00 ff  00 00
LDN 0x01 (Parallel port)
idx 30 60 61 70 74 f0
val 01 03 78 07 04 38
def 01 03 78 07 04 3f
LDN 0x02 (COM1)
idx 30 60 61 70 f0
val 01 03 f8 04 00
def 01 03 f8 04 00
LDN 0x03 (COM2)
idx 30 60 61 70 f0 f1
val 01 02 f8 03 00 00
def 01 02 f8 03 00 00
LDN 0x05 (Keyboard)
idx 30 60 61 62 63 70 72 f0
val 01 00 60 00 64 01 00 80
def 01 00 60 00 64 01 0c 80
LDN 0x06 (Consumer IR)
idx 30 60 61 70
val 00 00 00 00
def 00 00 00 00
LDN 0x07 (Game port, MIDI port, GPIO 1)
idx 30 60 61 62 63 70 f0 f1  f2
val 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00
def 00 02 01 03 30 09 ff 00  00
LDN 0x08 (GPIO 2, watchdog timer)
idx 30 f0 f1 f2 f3 f5 f6 f6  f7
val 00 ff ff ff 00 00 00 00  00
def 00 ff 00 00 00 00 00 00  00
LDN 0x09 (GPIO 3)
idx 30 f0 f1 f2 f3
val 00 ff ff ff 00
def 00 ff 00 00 00
LDN 0x0a (ACPI)
idx 30 70 e0 e1 e2 e3 e4 e5  e6 e7 f0 f1 f3 f4 f6 f7  f9 fe ff
val 00 00 00 00 14 00 00 00  00 00 00 af 32 00 00 00  00 00 00
def 00 00 00 00 NA NA 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00
LDN 0x0b (Hardware monitor)
idx 30 60 61 70 f0
val 01 02 90 00 00
def 00 00 00 00 00

After mbmon starts failing as obove, there is only one difference in the dump. A single byte in the hardware monitor:

LDN 0x0b (Hardware monitor)
idx 30 60 61 70 f0
val 01 02 0b 00 00
def 00 00 00 00 00

Steve, how would you go about doing the reset you were talking about?

EDIT: I assume the reset you mentioned was the initialization bit in the configuration register at 40h. I tried writing to this register with your readio/writeio tools but still got nothing back but FF. In fact, all reads are returning FF. Except for the results of the superiotool dump, I would think the chip had simply shut down.

I can live without the temperature if I must. But I have no ability to change the fan speed now. I had it set up to automatically adjust the fan speed based on the CPU temp. Now I can neither determine the temp nor adjust the fans. The only way to fix this appears to be to reboot which is not acceptable.

Would enabling speedstep or powerd make any difference?

sthames42

EUREKA!

Steve, you're gonna love this!

After learning what the output from superiotool actually meant and reviewing the Winbond data sheet, I realized the only change in the two dumps was the hardware monitor base address changed from 0290h to 020Bh. I wrote a little script using your readio/writeio tools to reset the base address. I never expected this to work but lo' and behold it did! Everything started working again.

I guess I should modify WGXepc to check for and correct this but I don't have a FreeBSD platform to do it on. Maybe I'll try and do it on one of my Fireboxes.

stephenw10

Nice work. That seems odd though. I'll have to read the data sheet myself unless you can enlighten me. How was anything able to be read if the base address had changed? Only the extended registers changed? Why did it change? :-
Like you say it should be relatively easy to check that and set it back. :)

Hmm, just wondering if the base address changed due to some other piece of hardware requiring access to that address space. I didn't think it could change except at boot on the ISA bus but really I don't know. Perhaps even our own script is trying to access the space twice causing the shift.
It might be better to read the base address and just use it rather than trying to change it back.

Steve

sthames42

Nothing was able to read from the hardware monitor but everything else seems to have been okay. I've been doing some thinking about that and looking at the WGXepc code.

As I said, the only difference in the registers was device 0x0b (Hardware Monitor) register 0x61 changed from 0x90 to 0x0b. I run a daemon that uses WGXepc to continually check the temp and adjust the fan speed accordingly. The basic script came from https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=66129.msg360358#msg360358. bigramon was doing the same thing which started this topic.

I'm working on the theory that WGXepc is writing 0x0b to the 0x61 register for device 0x0b. I can see how this could happen if port_out(EFDR, 0x0b) was done after a call to get_w83627_addr_port() but it does not look like that is whats happening.

Any thoughts?

sthames42

I decided I didn't want to modify WGXepc. It's not my code and I really don't know where any repository for it is. I believe this problem is caused by a bug in it, though. There is one issue I saw: get_w83627_addr_port() leaves the chip in Extended Function mode. The result of subsequent port I/O might be unpredictable at times.

What I did instead, Steve, was to modify my daemon script to check for a temp of 255 and then use your writeio tool to reset the base address for the hardware monitor. Not the most elegant solution but it works reliably, so far.

For anyone interested in this solution, here is the relevant section of the script:

   cpu_temp=`/usr/local/bin/WGXepc -t | sed '1,2d'`

   # Temperature of 255 means Winbond chip hardware monitor base address
   # has been hosed. Use writeio to reset the address. This has only been
   # tested on the X550e.
   if [ $cpu_temp -ge 255 ]
   then
    /usr/local/bin/writeio 0x2e 0x87 > /dev/null # Put Winbond into 
    /usr/local/bin/writeio 0x2e 0x87 > /dev/null #   Extended Function mode.
    /usr/local/bin/writeio 0x2e 0x07 > /dev/null # Set logical device number
    /usr/local/bin/writeio 0x2f 0x0b > /dev/null #   to Hardware Monitor.
    /usr/local/bin/writeio 0x2e 0x60 > /dev/null # Reset  
    /usr/local/bin/writeio 0x2f 0x02 > /dev/null #   monitor base
    /usr/local/bin/writeio 0x2e 0x61 > /dev/null #   address to
    /usr/local/bin/writeio 0x2f 0x90 > /dev/null #   0290h.
    /usr/local/bin/writeio 0x2e 0xaa > /dev/null # Exit Extended Function mode.
    continue
  fi

The writeio tool you can get from Steve's google site. There is a link to it earlier in this topic.

Thanks again for your help, Steve.

stephenw10

Thanks for that. I'll have to look into that bug. However I don't think it should be an issue for just reading the temperature because to do so does not require using extended function mode.

It also interesting to note that in the third post in this thread Bigramon's box fails to a state where the temperature is showing 88C and the fan speeds stop reading but the hardware monitor base address in unchanged. Perhaps a completely different bug. ::)

Steve

sthames42

get_w83627_addr_port() enters extended mode to get the base address, adds 0x05 to it, and returns the result. getcputemp() calls get_w83627_addr_port() and uses the result (0295h) as the index port and +1 as the data port. The reads fail afterward because they're using the wrong ports.

This was why I didn't want to change the code. It was unclear why this was done this way so I didn't have enough confidence in my level of knowledge and I only had the X550e to test with.

I agree bigramon's original problem must have been something else.

stephenw10

Ha, I should really re-familiarise myself with the code before commenting. ;)
Interestingly that's how it should be done and what I suggested above. Read in the base address and use it, don't assume it's 290. However that implies that if the base address changed it should still work. :-\ It seems then that the register indicating the base address changed but the actual address perhaps did not. It might have worked better if I had just assumed it was at 290! ::)

Steve