FreeBSD monitoring tools?

KlaymenDK · Post by **KlaymenDK** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:20 am

I'm putting together a new pc that's supposed to be both powerful and silent. I'm looking to monitor the temperature of the case and dual-core cpu; the speed and voltage of the case, psu, and cpu fans; and the temperatures (and smart status?) of one 2.5" and two mirrored (raided) 3.5" disks.

All the reviews "out there" refer to Windows-based tools, which is natural since that's what most (people|gamers) use. But I use FreeBSD.

Right now I'm using GKrellM, but all my crummy hardware until now has been unable to provide proper sensors (does not support mbmon or healthd), so I have no experience with anything else than the cpu load chart...

I just found out about a tool called smartmontools.

Does anyone have any experience with any of these?
Does anyone have any experience with something else?

Li'l help please!

KlaymenDK · Post by **KlaymenDK** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 8:36 am

Wow, 75 views and nobody knows anything?
I'd think the subject line would draw in BSD-specific users, but perhaps not.

All right then, does anyone know some Linux-alternatives to Speedfan, Motherboard Monitor, and CoreTemp?

dukla2000 · Post by **dukla2000** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 10:48 am

KlaymenDK wrote:All right then, does anyone know some Linux-alternatives to Speedfan, Motherboard Monitor, and CoreTemp?

Dont know about BSD, but have no problems in (SuSE) Linux - most of the low level stuff needed (like sensors) is there by default. I add hddtemp, gkfreq, and then view it all through GKrellM. Have reports on all the (temp, fan & voltage) sensors supported by the mobo as well as both hdd temps, CPU usage (user, system & nice), processor speed (well multiplier - I tweaked gkfreq as I run 245 HTT) and various other GKrell bits.

is the result.

KlaymenDK · Post by **KlaymenDK** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 1:24 pm

That is nice to see.

I'm now confident that I 'just' need to get hardware that actually supports monitoring, and the software will be available.

Thanks!

fri2219 · Post by **fri2219** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 5:04 pm

I think sensorsd might be what you're looking for.

KlaymenDK · Post by **KlaymenDK** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 10:11 am

Try googling freebsd sensorsd and you'll get an idea why sensorsd isn't in FreeBSD. Wow, I had no idea. Sad, really.

Vaski · Post by **Vaski** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 8:30 am

Does lm_sensors not work for BSD?

yoitsmeremember · Post by **yoitsmeremember** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 4:30 am

I've used mbmon (/usr/ports/sysutils/mbmon). It's very simple, and while it won't give you everything you want (SMART, for one, and I don't think it gives voltages IIRC), it will still give you fan speeds and temp, over the terminal and you can retrieve it over the network (most useful for php scripts) using its TCP/IP listening feature. I no longer use it as it requires a lower securelevel than what I typically run my systems at (securelevel 2), and I don't see it as a critical service so I wasn't willing to lower it just to use mbmon. A nice little app if you can run it though.

quikkie · Post by **quikkie** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 8:27 am

if you gave us a clue about what hardware you have then maybe we can find something that will work... my google-fu is typically pretty good

KlaymenDK · Post by **KlaymenDK** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 8:41 am

quikkie wrote:if you gave us a clue about what hardware you have

Me? What I have is a Fujitsu Siemens Scenic D1322 ... what I'm getting (when it finally ships, in about two weeks

) is a Gigabyte GA-EP43-DS3R which is supposed to have a lot more hardware monitors. So, soon I should be able to make a lot more sense of the tools that The fact that I don't know any of these hw monitoring tools obscured the fact that my current hardware doesn't support them. Very frustrating, but now I'm the wiser ... and soon also more experienced.

KlaymenDK · Post by **KlaymenDK** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 1:36 am

All right, now that I have new hardware somewhat up-and-running, my situation looks a good deal better.

First off, I installed smartmontools. It reported my drives were running at 33*C and the WD drives didn't do excessive head parking. So that's one point chalked up as a success.

Then I installed xmbmon, but it only shows a blank graph. Not to worry, I'll deal with that later.

Puzzlingly, mbmon in a terminal reports that my cpu is running at a rather impressive 190*C, even though my bios claims a more reasonable 26*C. I'll also deal with this later.

No idea yet how to obtain a GPU temp reading.

I have yet to install gkrellm2 to see if I can get it to display these newly aquired sensor readings. (Note to self: To use mbmon sensors in gkrelllm, run the command "mbmon -r -P port-number" before gkrellm is started and have the same "port-number" configured in the gkrellm Sensors->Options config page.)

All in all, there's still some work to do, but things are looking decidedly more promising.

morpheus · Post by **morpheus** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 3:22 am

dont know anything about BSD, but if you want web-based monitoring and logging, checkout munin. You still need lmsensors or some other similar sensor-reading program working underneath. Check the munin plugins for more info