nForce4 linux lm-sensors - how to get it up

26.06.'05 - 18:11 | If you want to know more about Linux and nForce4 skip to second part of this article.

If you want to set up nForce4 sensors to show all, and more than BIOS shows you, you are at the right place. I did it for lmsensors 2.8.8 in kernel 2.6.11.

First you need to modifiy file /etc/sensors.conf otherwise you will get alarms.

# diff  sensors.conf  sensors.conf.orig
1410,1414c1410
< ignore in3
< ignore in5
< ignore in6
< ignore in7
< ignore in8
---
>
1422,1423d1417
< compute in0 0.03+@ , @-0.03
<
1457,1458c1451,1452
<     set in0_min 1.2
<     set in0_max 1.8
---
>     set in0_min 1.5 * 0.95
>     set in0_max 1.5 * 1.05
1496,1497c1490,1491
<     label temp3       "chipset"
<     set   temp3_over  90
---
>     label temp3       "Temp3"
>     set   temp3_over  45
1514c1508
<     set fan2_min 500
---
>     set fan2_min 3000
1516c1510
<     set fan3_min 500
---
>     set fan3_min 3000

Then if you do that by hand or in rc.local or /etc/modules:

modprobe i2c-core
modprobe i2c-sensors
modprobe i2c-dev
modprobe i2c-isa

modprobe it87 force_it87=9191,0x290

run "sensors -s"
and "sensors"

to do it lm-sensors way put this into /etc/sysconfig/lm_sensors

MODULE_0=i2c-nforce2
MODULE_1=i2c-isa
MODULE_2=it87 force_it87=9191,0x290

and here it is:

it8712-isa-0290
Adapter: ISA adapter
VCore 1:   +1.12 V  (min =  +1.20 V, max =  +1.81 V)   ALARM
VCore 2:   +2.54 V  (min =  +2.40 V, max =  +2.61 V)
+3.3V:     +6.69 V  (min =  +3.14 V, max =  +3.46 V)   ALARM
+12V:     +12.03 V  (min = +11.39 V, max = +12.61 V)
fan1:     1339 RPM  (min =    0 RPM, div = 8)
fan2:     1048 RPM  (min =  664 RPM, div = 8)
fan3:     1638 RPM  (min =  664 RPM, div = 8)
M/B Temp:    +25°C  (low  =   +15°C, high =   +40°C)   sensor = thermistor
CPU Temp:    +33°C  (low  =   +15°C, high =   +45°C)   sensor = thermistor
chipset:     +70°C  (low  =   +15°C, high =   +90°C)   sensor = thermistor

PS: I found, M/B temperature is still showing 25C - it is probably not working correctly.
PS: 10.12.2005 Chipset temp is changing but it showing nonsence, I measured with thermometer 56-95C and it is still showing only 71C.

nForce4 and Linux in general

I am not using much of the features of nForce4, I choose it only because it has PCIe, SATAII and NCQ, and on Gigabyte K8N Ultra-9 it is cooled passively (passive cooling shows to be fake). How I found later in kernel list, the NCQ is not working with Linux (I thought it is HW only feature, but it seems it is not?!) and probably never will as nVidia won't/can't reveal specs. So SATA is working as PATA IDE disk UDMA133.

I am not using RAID or onboard audio (onboard audio quality is always point to discuss), I also do not use nforce hw firewall, and I do not cry for that as iptables do what I need.

Big disappointment is also nforce integrated gigabit ethernet controler as none of them (there are two on k8n) does it's job 100%. For licensed primary ethernet Marvell core nVidia can't release specs, therefore there is only revers engineered driver forcedeth which is not capable to be used as 1Gbps but only knows 100/10Mbps. I also had serious troubles with wake-on-lan and therefore I am not using this eth controler. Cicada, the second controler, I never heard of before and I did not find any way how to use it to date (nevertheless it is not a full controler).

The only thing I got to work and I did not expect it to, were lm sensors. Also I have no troubles to use nVidia TurboCache graphics cards with this board on Linux (using nvidia proprietary driver).

Counting one+one nForce4 is not a good chipset for Linux.

However using naked hardware as I described makes no troubles to me with AMD64 and FC4, so I live happily with nForce4 for now, but I do not like it.