Health Monitoring on Dell 600SC

[Dan Mahoney, System Admin]

On Sun, 8 Mar 2009, Tim Judd wrote:

> 
> 
> On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 2:02 AM, Dan Mahoney, System Admin <danm at prime.gushi.org> wrote:
>       On Sun, 8 Mar 2009, Polytropon wrote:
>
>             On Sat, 7 Mar 2009 23:04:45 -0500 (EST), "Dan Mahoney, System Admin" <danm at prime.gushi.org> wrote:
>                   Hey all,
>
>                   I've got a dell 600SC in a remote location, and it's started freezing up
>                   (I'm thinking I've got a dying fan).
> 
>
>             I'm not familiar with this special Dell system, but maybe the
>             tools mbmon and healthd (from ports) can help you to monitor
>             at least fan speeds and temperatures (as well as voltages).
>             They're using the kernel's SMB facility.
> 
> 
> pciconf -l -v doesn't show an smbus on this system, even with the kernel options compiled in.
> 
> healthd, I've tried, and it talks to some chips directly, but it hasn't been updated in forever.
> 
> bsdhwmon looks like it did two releases and went unsupported, reports this board as unsupported.
> 
> It would appear that older linux kernels find the hardware as follows on this link http://hausheer.osola.com/docs/8 (I
> realize BSD and linux are different, but perhaps the output there could help someone to know if something there is
> supported).
> 
> Sadly, porting lm_sensors to BSD is hard because of all the kernel dependencies and abstraction.  But something more
> "universal" under BSD as opposed to several years-outdated ports would be REALLY COOL.
> 
> 
> Dan,
> 
> I'm curious...  and only curious.  Have you discovered if the OpenManage suite works with any drivers on the Linux system? 
> Because if OpenManage is a userland utility only, running OpenManage with linux compatibility should work, right?

It would appear that the openmanage stuff requires kernel modules to be 
loaded.  As the way the linuxemu under BSD works, it basically includes a 
whole linux-kernel into the BSD kernel, I doubt any of those modules would 
load.

This is a shame, we've gotten to the point where we can drop in windows 
drivers for things like modems and network cards (which I can easily slap 
a compatible one into my system and ignore the noncompatible one).

But I can't exactly toss another hw monitoring chip in.  :(

> My understanding of Linux compat is the ability to run userland apps (not drivers) under BSD.  The closed minded attitude of
> Dell that will support "X" but not "Y" is offensive to me and that is what makes me steer clear of the Dell branded stuff.

The systems came to me free, other than this dying fan thing, they've 
proven ROCK solid (and I have a bank of spare systems).

> I hope this might have sparked a interest - but I can't help with the Linux compat at all.  I run BSD because it's not Linux.

As do I.  But linux excels in this area.  lm_sensors is better than 
anything available under BSD.  Given the drastic age of the ports I 
mentioned above, what ARE people using to gauge their systems?  Or do 
people just not care about this stuff?

-Dan

-- 

"You recreate the stars in the sky with cows?"

-Furrball, March 7 2005, on Katamari Damacy

--------Dan Mahoney--------
Techie,  Sysadmin,  WebGeek
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Site:  http://www.gushi.org
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