Mark and Albert:
Thanks to both of you for your quick response.
I was sort of aware that the problem was on the user-side, not the
kernel patch, but let me tell you of the following scenario which
really DID happen.
I got asked to develop a utility which ran on a customer's Linux
laptops, polling performance statistics periodically, including power
state, disk I/O, CPU usage, thermal state, etc. They already had
something like this for Windoze and wanted a Linux utility so they
could see what their employees were actually doing out in the field,
and it would be emailed back from time to time to a server. (very big
brother IMHO, but I guess it would be voluntary)
It was in the course of working on this (pretty easy) task that I
fried my 600X. I then discovered that most of the laptops the
customer had were Thinkpads of the 600 series. I had nightmares about
how some of the users (even just one) would be
technologically-inhibited enough to ignore all warnings and run
'sensors-detect' and no matter how much I told them to RTFM on it I
would get blamed for the damage. The business type who was
negotiating the whole thing was not a good enough engineer to
appreciate the whole thing properly and so the project got pushed
aside. no big loss, as it was just a small amount of work -- but so
it goes.
So a warning on the kernel configuration seems like a good idea (who
knows maybe it will bring more attention to the problem and get IBM to
cooperate) and I hope some future version of the user-space utility
screams about Thinkpads:)
Merci again
coop
======================================================================
Jerry Cooperstein, PhD <coop at axian.com>
Senior Consultant
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Axian, Inc. <info at axian.com> // |_ __(_) ___ _ __
4800 SW Griffith Dr., Ste. 202 //| |\\/ /| |/ _ \| '_ \
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http://www.axian.com/ Software Consulting and Training
======================================================================
On Fri, Jul 19, 2002 at 08:22:23PM -0400, Mark Studebaker wrote:
> Here's the latest.
> The issue is not resolved. We stopped getting help from IBM
> several months ago.
> The kernel patches (and kernels like Red Hat that have had sensors
> included for quite a while now) only contain individual modules.
> They don't 'sense' any particular model of board - they look for
> a device they support, and either do nothing or exit if they
> don't find it.
>
> The tool that's been the problem for IBM users is sensors-detect,
> our hardware detection script. It is a userspace tool and is not
> part of the kernel patches.
>
> Unless a kernel user (whether 2.5, redhat, whatever) starts
> modprobing sensors modules he can't get hurt.
> We haven't heard any complaints from IBM users in quite a while -
> and as I said Red Hat has been shipping our package for over a year, IIRC.
>
> Sorry you toasted your thinkpad. Believe me if we had the info
> from IBM we needed we would try to fix it.
>
> mds
>
>
>
> Albert Cranford wrote:
> > I understand and fully appreciate your comments.
> > I'm sure that this is not resolved in our current 2.6.3
> > version that I'm currently integrating into linux-2.5.26.
> >
> > Today we released i2c&lm_sensors 2.6.4 with new IBM drivers
> > but this is for PPC and considered Beta testing at the
> > moment.
> >
> > I will make a change in the Config.in to warn 600x laptop
> > users to stay away.
> >
> > Thanks alot,
> > Albert
> >
> > Jerry Cooperstein wrote:
> >
> >>Hi:
> >>
> >>Having fried one motherboard on my 600x Thinkpad by use of
> >>sensor-detect (I'm not blaming anyone but myself for reading
> >>documentation a little too late--and I got it replaced on
> >>warranty) I'm kind of nervous about whether the lm_sensors
> >>patches going into the kernel are sensitive to the Thinkpad
> >>issue, either by resolving it, or sensing it is a Thinkpad
> >>and staying away from it.
> >>
> >>I haven't been able to find any recent documentation on this,
> >>so I'd appreciate it if you could bring me up to date. Besides
> >>my own fears, I have nightmares about distributions using
> >>such kernels and frying up laptops on unsuspecting users. I
> >>know from checking things out in the past the blame belonged
> >>to IBM and/or Intel, not Linux, but I'm not sure everyone
> >>would see it that way :<
> >>
> >>Thanks,
> >>
> >>coop
> >>
> >>======================================================================
> >> Jerry Cooperstein, PhD <coop at axian.com>
> >> Senior Consultant
> >> ____ _
> >> Axian, Inc. <info at axian.com> // |_ __(_) ___ _ __
> >> 4800 SW Griffith Dr., Ste. 202 //| |\\/ /| |/ _ \| '_ \
> >> Beaverton, OR 97005 USA _____//_| | / / | | |_| | | | |
> >> Voice: (541)758-8020 (( // |_|/_/\\|_|\_/|_|_| |_|
> >> ``-'' ``-''
> >> http://www.axian.com/ Software Consulting and Training
> >>======================================================================
> >
> >
>
