monitoring hardware temperatures

[Mikhail T.]

Hello!

I have a server (Dell Poweredge 2900), that's loaded with sensors.

While it was in Windows-mode, a utility was able to tell me not only the 
temperature of each CPU-core, but also that of every DIMM!.. One of them 
was running far hotter than others, and I'd like to continue keeping an 
eye on it now that the box run FreeBSD.

In FreeBSD there is coretemp(4), which is nice, but nothing else... 
There is no hw.acpi.thermal hierarchy either on this box... Yet, the box 
has 6 fans, two power-supplies, plus DIMMs -- all of them with sensors, 
that I can't read...

It seems, in 2007, there was an attempt to introduce OpenBSD's 
sensor-framework:

    http://kerneltrap.org/OpenBSD/BSDCan_2008_Hardware_Sensors_Framework

but it was backed-out after being declared a "pile of crap" and 
"festering junkpile" by our most mirthful contributor:

    http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=193129+0+archive/2007/cvs-all/20071021.cvs-all

"until a proper architectural solution has been found". Has that 
happened in the three years, that passed since that lovely discussion? 
Or are we still waiting for someone to design and implement it not 
merely "adequately", but "perfectly"?

If the three other BSD-cousins have had this for a while (NetBSD -- for 
10 years, apparently), continuing to insist on some future perfection 
seems wrong -- we should have this "adequate but imperfect" method if 
only for cross-BSD compatibility.

Is there, perhaps, a set of patches still secretly maintained by some 
die-hard? I'd love to try it here, and will be very thankful, if it 
gives me the monitoring, that I can not obtain otherwise... Thanks! Yours,

    -mi