bsdhwmon

bsdhwmon(8) is a program for FreeBSD for monitoring hardware sensors (fans, temperatures, voltages, chassis intrusion, and more) on commerical-grade server hardware. bsdhwmon(8) is developed with a very different mentality compared to other softwares:

Written with stability and production datacenter environments in mind
Intended for use with server products (Intel, Supermicro, Tyan, and possibly others)
Uses native FreeBSD drivers, such as smb(4), smbus(4), ichsmb(4), and amdsmb(4)
Based heavily on documentation provided from the server and H/W monitoring IC manufacturers
Full tested on both i386 and amd64 systems, using RELENG_6 and RELENG_7
Written entirely in C
Completely standalone; relies on no third-party libraries or tools (autoconf, etc.)
Very simple and clean code (heavily commented, well-documented, emits no warnings)
Open-source, released under the FreeBSD 2-clause BSD license

Things which I may implement in the future, but are not a priority right now:

Use dlopen(3), allowing for cleaner separation of the main program and the actual code which communicates with the H/W monitoring IC; decreases memory footprint and increases compatibility
Write support for bsnmpd(8), allowing SNMP-based monitoring of sensors
Support for very specific embedded platforms that provide documentation of existing sensors and SMBus/I2C details

bsdhwmon(8) is currently not ready for public release.

Supported products

Monitoring IC	FreeBSD SMBus Driver	Motherboard model(s)	Example output	Notes / Bugs
Winbond W83792D	ichsmb(4)	Supermicro P8SC8 Supermicro X6DHR-8G2 Supermicro X6DHR-TG	Available	5VCC/5VDD voltages are reported incorrectly. Likely caused by use of a different resistor value between Winbond and Supermicro. Request for details submit to Supermicro.
Winbond W83793G	ichsmb(4)	Supermicro PDSMA+ Supermicro PDSMi+ Supermicro X7DBP-8	Available

Monitoring ICs shown in the above tables are accurate, having been confirmed with the hardware manufacturer. Yes, they differ from the product specification and the user manual! This just goes to prove that what you see on a website, in a manual, or silkscreened on a chip is not necessarily true.

In-development products

Motherboard model(s)	Status
Supermicro X7DBE Supermicro X7DBE+ Supermicro X7SB4 Supermicro X7SBE Supermicro X7SBi	Being tested by users (alpha test phase).
Supermicro P8SCT Supermicro PDSMU Supermicro X5DPA-G Supermicro X5DPA-GG Supermicro X5DPR-TG2 Supermicro X7DBT Supermicro X7DVL-i	Waiting for additional details (BIOS labels/output, or kenv output) from testers.
Supermicro SuperBlade B7DBE Supermicro H8SSL-i2	Under development.
Supermicro P8SCi Supermicro PDSM4+ Supermicro PDSMi-LN1+ Supermicro PDSMi-LN2+ Supermicro PDSMi-LN4+ Supermicro X7DBP-i Supermicro X7DVL-3 Supermicro X7SBA	Need testers for these boards.
Supermicro PDSME+ Supermicro PDSMi Supermicro PDSMi-LN4 Supermicro X6DVE-G2	Need to request technical details from Supermicro, and find testers.
Intel S5000PAL	On hold; focusing on Supermicro support at this time.

Unsupported products

Monitoring IC	Motherboard model(s)	Reason
LM87 (dual chips)	Supermicro P4DLR	FreeBSD lacks a SMBus driver for the ServerWorks GC-LE chipset.
Winbond W83627HF	Supermicro P4SCE Supermicro P4SCI Supermicro P4SCT	No SMBus/I2C interface – ISA I/O only. `ports/sysutils/mbmon` might work.
Winbond W83782D	Tyan Thunder LE-T (S2518)	FreeBSD lacks a SMBus driver for the ServerWorks ServerSet III LE3 chipset.
	Supermicro 370SSE	No monitoring IC available.

Getting support for your hardware

The best way to get your server hardware supported is to get in contact with me. I'll need the following details:

Exact server and motherboard model used
Output of kenv | grep smbios

Once I get the above data, I'll get in contact with the board vendor to obtain necessary technical documentation, which can take a couple of weeks. I'll then write the necessary code, and send you a tarball as a MIME attachment. You'll need to run make, and run the compiled binary. Naturally I'll need the output. :-) The output should also be compared to that of what the BIOS reports (there may be some variance, especially in regards to temperatures; this is normal).

Alternative software

There are a limited number of hardware monitoring applications for FreeBSD, but here are those I've come across:

OpenBSD Sensor Framework — at one point this was committed to the FreeBSD src tree, but was rejected by many developers ("this should be in userland" being the main argument; I both agree and disagree). Very IPMI-oriented, but looks capable of supporting native ICs. Isn't available for FreeBSD per se, but maybe one day will be.
ports/sysutils/mbmon — Support for some newer Winbond chips, and of course older chips as well as LMxx via ISA bus. Has some custom one-offs for certain motherboards too. Also supports SMBus/I2C, but again, not in the way you would think. Additionally, the code is very difficult to follow, and badly commented. Documentation is semi-decent. Last update was 2006.
ports/sysutils/healthd — Support for (very) old Winbond and LMxx chips via ISA bus. It does have SMBus/I2C support, but not in the way you think it would. Code looks very similar to mbmon. Documentation is vague in many respects. Hasn't been updated since 2002.

Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@FreeBSD.org>

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