kern/123904: ipmi(4) reports negative temperature values on Dell PowerEdge 860s

[Sean McAfee]

>Number:         123904
>Category:       kern
>Synopsis:       ipmi(4) reports negative temperature values on Dell PowerEdge 860s
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Thu May 22 16:10:02 UTC 2008
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Sean McAfee
>Release:        6.3-R-p1
>Organization:
Collaborative Fusion, Inc.
>Environment:
FreeBSD xxxx 6.3-RELEASE-p1 FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE-p1 #0: Tue May 20 06:52:57 UTC 2008     smcafee at xxxx:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP  amd64
>Description:
Polling ipmi(4) reports a negative value for the Temp sensor reports negative values:

>From ipmitool:
[smcafee at xxxx ~]$ sudo ipmitool sdr list     
Temp             | -63 degrees C     | cr
..

>From freeipmi:
[smcafee at xxxx ~]$ sudo ipmi-sensors
1: Temp (Temperature): -63.00 C (5.00/125.00): [At or Below (<=) Lower Critical Threshold]
..

We have not seen this in any of the other Poweredges (850/1850/1950/2850/2950) we've deployed.

Using remote lan-based IPMI polling (ipmitool -I lan) does not exhibit this problem.

Here's relevant the sysctl/dmesg output:
[smcafee at xxxx ~]$ sudo sysctl -a | grep -i ipmi
Password:
         ipmi     0     0K       -     5058  128,2048
ipmi0: <IPMI System Interface> on isa0
ipmi0: KCS mode found at io 0xca8 alignment 0x4 on isa
ipmi0: KCS error: ff
ipmi0: IPMI device rev. 0, firmware rev. 1.81, version 1.5
ipmi0: Number of channels 4
ipmi0: Attached watchdog
hw.ipmi.on: 1
dev.ipmi.0.%desc: IPMI System Interface
dev.ipmi.0.%driver: ipmi
dev.ipmi.0.%parent: isa0
>How-To-Repeat:
Poll ipmi(4) via freeipmi or ipmitool.
>Fix:


>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: