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Mother Board Monitor Program for X Window System
XMBmon ver.1.07pl1
for FreeBSD (and possibly Linux, but not checked).
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<< 0. What's this software >>
Recently there are a lot of mother boards available, which have
functionalities to monitor the CPU temperatures and the frequency
of CPU cooling fans etc. Although some programs utilizing these
hardware monitoring facilities have been developed for the
Microsoft Windows platforms, no program seems to exist for PC-UNIX
and the X Windows System platforms. Therefore, I have tried to
make small programs. They have only least functionalities,
the one "mbmon" used at the command line reports the temperatures,
voltages and rpm (rounds per minute) of cooling fans, and the
other "xmbmon" displays the three temperatures and core voltage
as simple curves.
<< 1. Changes in the new version >>
------------------------------------------------------------
patch level 1 (problems in version 1.07)
* SMBus of AMD chipset (756, 766) was not supported.
* The transformation from Celsius to Fahrenheit was wrong.
------------------------------------------------------------
* Few more hardware monitor chips are supported (Winbond's
W83627HF, W83697HF; ITE's IT8705F, IF8712F).
* Few more SMBus interface chips are supported (Intel's 810,
820 etc south bridges: ICH, ICH2 etc; VIA's KT266/A south bridge:
VT8233).
* More powerful automatic detection of supported hardware monitor
chips and and SMBus interface chips (this is far form complete,
though).
* Various output of the "mbmon" program is supported. This is
mainly for purpose of utilizing the output for more fancy
graphic programs rather than the "xmbmon" (like, e.g. MRTG).
* Support displaying a label in the "xmbmon" for convenience of
monitoring more than one machine at the same time (just like
"xload" using -label option/resource).
* Support not displaying one of temperatures by putting
option/resource as "NOTEMP" if one wishes (it was determined
at the compilation in the previous version).
* Support temperature in Fahrenheit.
* Others: Fixing small bugs.
<< 2. Supported hardware monitor chips >>
The following hardware monitor chips are supported and the
programs work work if your mother board uses one of them or
their compatible chip:
National Semiconductor co. LM78/LM79
WinBond co. W83781D, W83782D, W83783S,
W83627HF, W83697HF built-in
ASUSTek co. AS99127F
VIA Technology co. VT82C686A/B built-in
Integrate Technology Express co. IT8705F, IF8712F built-in
<< 3. Supported SMBus interface chips >>
There are several methods of the interface to hardware monitor
chips: one using ISA-IO port, or using specific method for VIA
82C686A/B chip (see below for details). But the most common way
is the one through the so-called SMBus (System Management Bus),
and the IO port is different for different SMBus interface chips.
In this version, the following chips (the south bridge of the
chipset) are supported:
Intel: PIIX4 (440BX), ICH, ICH2 (810, 815, 820 ...)
VIA: VT82C596/B, VT82C686A/B (KT133/A), VT8233 (KT233/A)
Here, I must confess that I myself did not check the Intel ones,
because I have no motherboard, which uses Intel chipsets, available
at hand. So I cannot guarantee the programs work.
On the motherboard, which is checked by myself:
ABIT: BH6(440BX+LM79), KT7A(KT133A), KG7(AMD761+VIA686A)
ASUS: P2B,P2B-F,P2B-B(440BX+W83781D), P3B-F(440BX+AS99127F),
K7VM(KT133+W83782D), A7V,A7V133(KT133/A+AS99127F)
EpoX: BX6SE(440BX+W83782D), 8KHA+(KT266A+W83697HF)
ECS: K7S5A(Sis735+IT8705F)
<< 4. How to use >>
By using "./configure" and "make" under the directory where this
package is unpacked, two binary programs
mbmon Mother Board Monitor for tty-terminal
xmbmon Mother Board Monitor for X
will be generated.
((NOTICE)) These programs access SMBus or ISA-IO port without
any kind of checking. It is, therefore, very dangerous and
may cause system-crash in worst cases. Especially, accesses of
IO port 0x295, 0x296 may conflict NE2000 boards' IO ports.
Users are requested to be sure that access to those ports are
allowed. I do not take any responsibilities for problems caused
by using these programs.
If you succeed compiling the programs, then it is better first
to check they will work on your mother board. Switch to the root
user, and execute "mbmon" like this,
# ./mbmon -d
in the debug mode. If you do NOT get the following error message,
No Hardware Monitor found!!
InitMBInfo: Undefined error: 0
but it displays information of the detected hardware monitor chip,
then the programs will most probable work. Try to execute "mbmon"
now without "-d" option, and if the following output
Temp.= 34.2, 57.0, 48.0; Rot.= 4623, 4420, 2060
Vcore = 1.86, 3.54; Volt. = 3.54, 4.93, 12.13, -11.98, -5.01
comes every five seconds, congratulation! The programs are working
on your system. Just stop it by typing "^C" (CTRL-C), and install
these two programs (Only ^C can stop "mbmon"). Note that both
programs access SMBus or ISA-IO port so that they should sit in a
directory in the PATH variable with the "setuid root" permission.
An example of installation is written in Makefile. If you put
"mbmon" in /usr/local/bin and "xmbmon" in /usr/X11R6/bin, then
just type
# make install
and then they are installed properly.
As I said, the programs access IO port directly, so even if
the program has a "setuid root" permission, they won't work on the
system where this IO port access is prohibited. If the following
message,
InitMBInfo: Operation not permitted
This program needs "setuid root"!!
comes on FreeBSD, the system security level is too strict and
IO port access is not allowed (see kern_securelevel_enable,
kern_securelevel in /etc/rc.conf). Make your security level lower,
or just give up to use the programs.
As for the Linux platforms, add -DLINUX option to the DEFS
variable in Makefile and compile. I do not check that the programs
work at Linux platforms because I do not have Linux machines
available around me. Maybe they will work or won't (if the ISA-IO
port access method works, they possibly will, since the previous
version 1.05 worked).
<< 5. A bit of more details >>
This software are programmed mainly to use Winbond W86781D chip
as a hardware monitor chip of mother board. This chip can handle
three temperatures (Temp0, Temp1, Temp2), seven voltages (V0 - V6),
and three FAN rotational speeds (Fan0, Fan1, Fan2). The program,
"mbmon", shows all the information in text on tty's, and "xmbmon"
shows Temp0,1,2 and V0(Vcore) in graphic on X. The units are degree in
Celsius (C) for temperatures [it is now possible to show in Fahrenheit
(F) from version 1.07], Volt (V) for voltages, and rotations per
minute (rpm) for Fan rotation speeds. Other chips may not support
all of them. For example, VIA's VI82C686 will report on
two temperatures, five voltages, and two fan speeds. The items
which are not supported by chip are displayed by "0.0" or "0"
in the "mbmon" output. The program "mbmon" can take a input of
interval (in seconds, default value is 5 seconds) for showing the
output monitor information.
In the case of "xmbmon", Temp0,1,2 are depicted with legends
"MB", "CPU", "chip", respectively. They are X resources and can be
freely changed (see the included file, xmbmon.resources). Note that
which temperature is assigned is different in each motherboard.
If these legends are not appropriate for your mother board, change
them appropriately by yourself. If your motherboard has only two
sensor and/or only two are connected, it is possible not to display
one of the three temperatures by setting "NOTEMP" (or blank '')
(see section 6. for details of options/resources ).
If you do not know what kind of hardware monitor chips your mother
board has, then by using the following "debug" option
# mbmon -d
# xmbmon -debug
information of the monitor chip would be detected. You can judge,
more or less, whether these programs can run on your machine.
Among the supported hardware monitor chips, LM78/79 has only Temp0
(measuring the temperature of mother board), and W83783S does not
support Temp2. Some mother board may not use all Temp0/1/2
functionalities even though the monitor chip has all. Usually,
Temp0 is for measuring mother board's temperature, which is about
the room temperature and does not change. Temp1,2 are only effective
when they are connected to external sensor chips explicitly in most
cases. But in recent mother boards (like ASUS P3B-F) Temp1 is often
connected to the inner sensor of Pentium II/III CPU by default.
The mother boards I have tried to run the programs and the results
of run with the "debug" option are collected in the file "DEBUG_info"
attached this package.
Generally, recent mother boards provide two access methods to the
hardware monitor chip, namely those using the SMBus (System Management
Bus) and the old fashioned ISA-IO port. New chips (like AS99127F
on ASUS P3B-F mother board) would only allow the SMBus access method.
The programs in the previous version (ver.1.05) access to this SMBus
through the power management device driver "intpm", which was
supported after FreeBSD 3.3R. But this "intpm" driver is only for
the Intel 440BX south chipset PIIX4, and cannot be used for other
chipsets like VIA's ones, which are widely used for Athlon mother
boards[Note1]. In this new version, I have included new functions
in order to access the SMBus directly without any help of device
drivers supported by OS (FreeBSD). Therefore, the programs DO
direct IO port access, if used the default compiling options, and
so they are "dangerous" programs. However, if the proper device
driver, like the "intpm" driver, is available, the SMBus access
method by the ioctl function call, which is the defaults method
in the previous version (ver.1.05), can be used. In order for this
possible, you have to add compiling option -DSMBUS_IOCTL to the
DEFS macro variable in the Makefile. Then, if the "./configure"
process finds /dev/smb0, this safer access method (SMBus ioctl call)
is used in place of the newly implemented direct SMBus access
routines.
The built-in hardware monitor in the VIA's south chipset
VT82C686A/B has an another access method to the chip, by using
a different ISA-IO port access from that of Winbond chips.
Thus, including this for VT82C686A/B, there are three methods to
talk to the supported hardware monitor chips. I call this specific
method for the VIA's chip, method V, more general method using
SMBus, method S, and the old fashioned ISA-IO port method for the
LM78/79 or Winbond chips, method I. One can impose the programs
to use one of these three methods by giving a method option;
# mbmon -[V|S|I]
# xmbmon -method [V|S|I]
for method, V, S, I, respectively. To check your mother board
supports which access method, you just try to execute programs with
this and the debug option (-d). If this method option is not put,
the programs try to check method V, S, I in this order, and
automatically choose the access method. There are many more options
for "xmbmon", which will be denoted by execute it with a help option
(-h or -help). They are explained in details in the place of
explanation of X resources.
I have developed the programs in the environment of FreeBSD 4.4-
RELEASE. As for the Linux platform, I have checked that the program
can be compiled in the environment of "linux_devtools-6.1" of the
FreeBSD ports. I have asked someone to try the programs on some
Linux platforms, and found they may work. But, in any case, I can
not guarantee because I did not check them by myself.
[Note1] Recently, power management device driver for the VIA's
VT82C596/VT82C686 south chipset ("viapm" driver) has been
developed. Recent OS version (version 4.X? or 5.X?) of FreeBSD
systems may be possible to include it. Then, the safer SMBus ioctl
access method may be used. Just try to compile with compiling
option "-DSMBUS_IOCTL", then. A recent information on the "viapm"
driver can be checked at
http://people.freebsd.org/~nsouch/iicbus.html
http://www.planet.kobe-u.ac.jp/~takawata/acpi/
<< 6. Options, and X resources of "xmbmon" >>
"mbmon" has the following options:
# mbmon -h
MotherBoard Monitor, ver.1.07 by YRS
Usage: mbmon [options...] <seconds for sleep> (default 5 sec)
options:
-V|S|I: access method (using "VIA686 HWM directly"|"SMBus"|"ISA I/O port")
-f: temperature in Fahrenheit
-d: debug mode (any other option will be ignored)
-h: print help message(this) and exit
-c count: repeat <count> times and exit
-T|F [1-7]: print Temperature|Fanspeed according to following styles
style1: data1\n
style2: data2\n
style3: data3\n
style4: data1\ndata2\n
style5: data1\ndata3\n
style6: data2\ndata3\n
style7: data1\ndata2\ndata3\n
-u: print system uptime
-t: print present time
-n|N: print hostname(long|short style)
-i: print integers in the summary(with -T option)
Here, -V|S|I is specifying the access method to the hardware monitor
chips mentioned above; -f is for showing temperatures in Fahrenheit
rather than Celsius; -d for debugging; -h for showing help messages
above. The options below -c are new for displaying various output
of the hardware monitor: They are rather apparent from the message
above; -c "count" is for exit of execution after showing the output
"count" times; -T|F for output of temperature or fan speed in the
following "style"; -u, -t, -n|N for showing some machine information,
which is not related to the hardware monitor actually; -i is for
output in integer rather than floating point format.
"xmbmon" is programmed with the X toolkit, and the standard X
resources (like geometry, font) can be used. Other "xmbmon" specific
resources are the following:
XMBmon*count: counts to check temp. etc in "sec" below (default:4)
XMBmon*sec: period in seconds for plot one point (default:20)
XMBmon*wsec: total period in seconds for window width (default:1800)
XMBmon*tmin: lowest scale of temperature in degree C (default:10.0)
XMBmon*tmax: highest scale of temperature in degree C (default:50.0)
XMBmon*vmin: lowest scale of V-core voltage in V (default:1.80)
XMBmon*vmax: highest scale of V-core voltage in V (default:2.20)
XMBmon*tick: number of ticks for temp. and V-core (default:3)
XMBmon*cltmb: color for plotting Temp0 (default:blue)
XMBmon*cltcpu: color for plotting Temp1 (default:red)
XMBmon*cltcs: color for plotting Temp2 (default:cyan)
XMBmon*clvc: color for plotting Vcore (default:green)
XMBmon*cmtmb: legend of Temp0, NOTEMP for not showing (default:\ MB)
XMBmon*cmtcpu: legend of Temp1, NOTEMP for not showing (default:CPU)
XMBmon*cmtcs: legend of Temp2, NOTEMP for not showing (default:chip)
XMBmon*cmvc: legend of Vcore (default:Vc\ )
XMBmon*method: access method (default:\ )
XMBmon*fahrn: temperature in Fahrenheit, True or False (default: False)
XMBmon*label: label (default: )
XMBmon*labelcolor: color of label (default: black)
The default behavior is that every 20(sec)/4(count)=5 seconds, the
timer interrupt occurs and then hardware monitor information is read.
The average value of four times' read-in is displayed as a colored
curve. The width of the "xmbmon" window corresponds to 1800(wsec)
seconds, i.e. 30 minutes. If time passes old plot data disappears
and renew the display (just like the "xload" program). The resources
above can be specified as options with the same name at the execution
time. The help option (-h or -help) shows these options like this:
# xmbmon -help
X MotherBoard Monitor, 1.07 by YRS
options:
: -g (100x140) <geometry(Toolkit option)>
: -count (4) <counts in an interval>
: -sec (20) <seconds of an interval>
: -wsec (1800) <total seconds shown>
: -tmin (10.0) <min. temperature>
: -tmax (50.0) <max. temperature>
: -vmin (1.80) <min. voltage>
: -vmax (2.20) <max. voltage>
: -tick (3) <ticks in ordinate>
: -cltmb (blue) <Temp1 color>
: -cltcpu (red) <Temp2 color>
: -cltcs (cyan) <Temp3 color>
: -clvc (green) <Vcore color>
: -cmtmb ( MB) <comment of Temp1> [Not shown ]
: -cmtcpu (CPU) <comment of Temp2> [if "NOTEMP"]
: -cmtcs (chip) <comment of Temp3> [set. ]
: -cmvc (Vc ) <comment of Vcore>
: -fahrn (False) <temp. in Fahrenheit>
: -label ( ) for showing label [No label if null-string.]
and -labelfont, -labelcolor
: -method ( ) <access method (V|S|I)>
: -debug for debug information
<< 7. Bugs >>
A serious bug of version prior to 1.06, i.e. "xmbmon" goes out
of control while other processes keep opening /dev/io device file,
is fixed in version 1.06pl1 (patch level 1). I hope there are
no more serious bugs (but maybe there are!).
<< 8. Those who want to support other hardware monitor chips >>
One nice point of this new version is that own SMBus access
functions are implemented. This means that one can access any
hardware monitor chips connected to the SMBus without the help
of any OS device drivers. So, if one wishes, one can search the
monitor chips, which is connected to the SMBus power management
hardware, from the PCI device configuration. If one can find
how to control the chip, then other hardware monitor chips rather
than those supported in this version of "mbmon/xmbmon" would
be possible to be supported by him/herself. For this purpose,
a test program for checking the PCI Configuration is prepared as
"testpci.c", for checking the SMBus power management as "testsmb.c",
and for checking Winbond-like hardware monitor facilities as
"testhwm.c"; all these programs are included in this package.
Functions for getting information of the PCI Configuration is
collected in "pci_hwm.c/h", and for the direct SMBus IO access,
they are in "smb_io.c/h". For those who want to support other
hardware monitor chips, I encourage them by providing these small
tools. But don't forget to prepare unexpected problems like OS
crash, because these tools are more dangerous than "mbmon/xmbmon"
themselves! (Actually, I have destroyed the file system once,
by mis-opened the disk controller and write directly to the
disk!).
One may be interested in which mother board uses what kind of
hardware monitor chips. Such information is available at the
homepage of Alex van Kaam, who is a developer of a famous MBM
(Mother Board Monitor) program on Microsoft Windows platforms,
http://mbm.livewiredev.com/
Or, in Japan, there is a useful information posted in the mailing-
list run by :p araffin.(Yoneya), who is a developer of other
famous monitoring software LM78mon on Windows platforms,
http://homepage1.nifty.com/paraffin/
The technical information for Winbond chips are available as PDF
files at Winbond homepage:
http://www.winbond.com.tw/
And there are many technical informations in the PDF forms are
collected at the hardware monitor (lm_sensor) homepage for Linux at
http://www.netroedge.com/~lm78/
But the information on particular hardware monitor chip may not be
necessarily available, then it is very difficult to support such
a chip.
[Note2] SMBus (System Management Bus) is one of general purpose
bus connected on PCI bus, and the Power Management facilities,
like ACPI, is installed on this bus architecture. Usually,
hardware monitor chips are connected on this. Thus, if one
wants to access the monitoring chip through SMBus, the following
two steps are necessary: (1) check the power management chip
(e.g. Intel PIIX4(440BX)), (2) find out which hardware monitoring
chip (e.g. AUS AS99127F) is connected to it. Here, VT82C686A/B
chip contains hardware monitoring facility built-in in the south
chipset itself.
<< 9. Acknowledgments >>
* The first version opened to the public is ver.1.04, which only
supports ISA-IO port access method for Winbond chips. The actual
access method to the chip was opened in the homepage of MBM by
Alex van Kaam mentioned above (unfortunately, the information is
not opened now). If I cannot find this information the programs
"mbmon/xmbmon" would not appear. I appreciate that he opened
this valuable information (which is now available as data sheet
PDF files at the Winbond homepage now, as shown above).
* For the next version 1.05, I got a great help by Takanori Watanabe
at Kobe University, who is a developer of "intpm" driver and
contributed a lot to support the SMBus ioctl access method. I have
introduced other direct SMBus access method in this version, the
SMBus ioctl method is still useful and even safer if there is a
proper support of OS device drivers (like "intpm" or "viapm"). The
separation of code for each access method is provided by him, and
it is a great help for developing this new version. I appreciate
his help. The (partial) support for Linux has been done from
ver.1.05 with the help of Koji Okamoto at Kyushu University. The
information of ASUS AS99127F hardware monitor chip supported from
ver.1.05 was provided by Noriyuki Yoneya (:p araffin.). I also
appreciate their help.
* In the previous version 1.06, I wanted to use "mbmon/xmbmon" for the
Athlon machines, the number of which are increasing around me because
of it's fast numeric computing ability. Here all the Athlon machines
I can use employ VIA's VT82C686A/B chipset, and it's information
as a hardware monitor chip is not opened yet. I got the information
from, again, Noriyuki Yoneya (:p araffin.). Furthermore, I found
that the ASUS mother board uses their own monitor chip AS99127F,
even though it employs VT82C686 south chipset. Then, (since I cannot
use "viapm" device driver on my old FreeBSD-3.X system) I need to
access the SMBus directly without any OS device driver. For this
purpose, detailed technical information on the method for getting
the PCI device configurations, and further, for accessing the SMBus
directly, are totally provided by Noriyuki Yoneya (:p araffin.).
Without his help, this new version cannot emerge in the present form.
I very much appreciate his generosity of helping me on this matter.
* In this version 1.07, I supported the more powerful facility of
output in "mbmon" by considering the request of freely utilizing
the output of the hardware monitor chip. For this purpose, I
just included the patch provided by Koji MORITA (morita@cybird.co.jp).
Thanks a lot for it.
* The extension of the supporting chips of both the hardware monitor
and SMBus interface in this version has been done thanks to the
information learned from the source codes of "lm_sensors-2.6.2",
which is a product of the lm_sensors Project for the Linux platform.
I greatly appreciate The Lm_sensors Group (http://www.netroedge.com/~lm78)
for developing and opening such useful source codes.
<< 10. Finally >>
The programs are completely free software. Any modifications and
changes to the programs are welcome, and they are freely copied and
distributed. The author is not at all responsible if anyone have
any problems or damages when using the programs. The author won't
keep the development of the programs any further, at least now. But
if someone develops any new better programs based on my own, I am
very glad if feedback is made to me (of course, it is not at all
any duties!).
February 10, 2002 Yoshifumi R. Shimizu,
Department of Fundamental Physics,
Kyushu University
e-mail : yrsh2scp@mbox.nc.kyushu-u.ac.jp
http://www.nt.phys.kyushu-u.ac.jp/shimizu/index.html