Hey Ed, We (three students from the Netherlands) are running quite a similar project right now: adding DMI support to sensors-detect, which tries to find a match with a local-database, then extracts the corresponding configuration. It sounds quite like the project you made. I don't have time to look into the software you made right now, but I will tonight. But it sounds like it is at least "very useful". I wonder what Jean (and ofcourse: everyone else) will think about it, Ivo Manca ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Lucas" <ejl at eberian.com> To: <lm-sensors at lm-sensors.org> Sent: Tuesday 27 March 2007 0:33 Subject: Motherboard-specific configurations (sensors4mobo) > Dear Lm-sensors team, > Back in 2005 the company I was working for needed consistent access > to sensor data from a range of motherboards (we were building > Managed-NAS systems), so we created motherboard-specific sensors.conf > files and a tool to install and query them. I have now been given > permission to update and release this software under the GPL. > > I have placed it all online at: > http://sensors4mobo.eberian.com > > Online Query Tool: > http://sensors4mobo.eberian.com/lookup/ > > Sample sensors.conf file: > http://sensors4mobo.eberian.com/lookup/mobolibrary/EPIA.conf > > > We aimed to tackle the following: > > * We were very happy with lm-sensors itself, but we found the output of > "/usr/bin/sensors" hard to parse reliably because of the variable labels > and fixed-width formatting. Instead, we now take the raw > "/usr/bin/sensors -u" output and massage it into a consistent CSV format > with extra data from an overlay file. > > * We needed an automated install for our systems. Understandably, > sensors-detect won't do this because it could kill the motherboard. We > felt it would be cleaner to work top-down using the output from > dmidecode to identify the motherboard and use a script to automatically > pick the matching sensors.conf file. We achieved this by adding keywords > and parameters in the comments within the sensors.conf files which this > script detects and uses to match against the dmidecode output. The > keywords allow the correct matching to the appropriate sensors.conf file > and can also include modprobe information to be added to /etc/modules. > An example of this is shown in the EPIA.conf file referenced above. > > * We wanted to standardise the terms used, so that it would be easier to > grep/understand what each sensor was being used to report. Initially, we > used a custom (and somewhat arcane) labelling convention that embedded > the type of sensor (fan,temperature,voltage) and the role in the label. > This has been replaced with a script that massages the output of > "sensors -u" and allows us to add extra overlay information. Through the > overlay we can add a (fixed) set of tags to describe the function of the > sensor - these can then be set on a case-by-case basis as well as a > human-readable comment field. > > > Overall, the idea of sensors4mobo is to act as an overlay to > sensors/dmidecode to add motherboard/installation-specific information > that is outside the current scope of the lm-sensors project. It also > allows a motherboard to be matched against an exact sensors.conf file > and removes the potential for error when a sensor chip may be used in > different ways on different motherboards (e.g. it may have a different > external resistor divider network). > > Is this of interest to anyone on the list? and do you have any > questions/suggestions? > > If you have any motherboard-specific sensors.conf files that you would > like to add, please just send them to me along with either the output of > "sensors4mobo_lookup --dump" or dmidecode and I will get on it. > > Since developing this, I have become aware of the sconfig tool created > during Google SoC 2006. It is interesting and I hope that we can find > some common ground around the sensors.conf files themselves, but I think > the two projects are sufficiently different in style and goal to merit > their existence. > > Thanks and best wishes, > Ed Lucas > > > > _______________________________________________ > lm-sensors mailing list > lm-sensors at lm-sensors.org > http://lists.lm-sensors.org/mailman/listinfo/lm-sensors
