HW Monitoring - Kernel drivers?

Ask Fedora
1

I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask. I’m trying to monitor some fans in my case, and I’m able to when I load a kernel module called NCT6775. I thought it would be automatically enabled by now (I tried in 2023), but it seems it’s not?

The driver is Kernel driver NCT6775 — The Linux Kernel documentation

I tried this a while back: Asus X670E TUF Gaming · Issue #416 · lm-sensors/lm-sensors · GitHub

but now I see that the lm-sensors project seems abandoned?

Thing is that now it seems like I don’t know where to go or who to ask. Is there any way to get these sensors automatically detected? Or must I load the module manually?

2

I see here that the sources come from a fedora repo, not github: Making sure you're not a bot!

As I understand it you should run sensors-detect to set things up.

3

Sorry for the delayed response. I tried sensors-detect, but it didnt detect anything: Sorry, no sensors were detected.

After doing sudo modprobe nct6775, I got sensors-detect and sensors to show the fans as stated in that github issue post. To make it permanent, I would have to create an entry in /etc/modules-load.d/ to load the module at boot, and then a /etc/sensors.d/ entry to map the corresponding names.

So, in sumary, it works when manually loading the module. Would it be possible to somehow ask Fedora to include the module and mappings by default?

4

Fans are only part of the cooling system. I think current hardware is designed to rely more on temperature sensors as they are directly connected to the parts that are at risk if cooling is inadequate.

5

the idea is to use something like coolercontrol to finetune the fans depending on the temperature without having to set the curves in UEFI menus

6

Do you have the CPU, GPU and motherboard temp sensors all working?

7

yeah, those work OOTB

8

Interesting, usually the chip that monitors the fans also provide the temp sensors, other them CPU.

9

actually, I think the CPU and GPU work OOTB, but MB not, and thats why I need to manually load the module

1 Like
10

See https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/hwmon/userspace-tools.html:

General hints to get things working:

  1. get lm-sensors userspace utils

  2. compile all drivers in I2C and Hardware Monitoring sections as modules in your kernel

  3. run sensors-detect script, it will tell you what modules you need to load.

  4. load them and run “sensors” command, you should see some results.

  5. fix sensors.conf, labels, limits, fan divisors

  6. if any more problems consult FAQ, or documentation

Edit: There is also: https://github.com/lm-sensors/lm-sensors:

TROUBLESHOOTING

lm-sensors is blamed for all kinds of problems on a regular basis.
While it is always possible that lm-sensors does in fact have a problem,
almost everytime the problem will be elsewhere. The most likely culprit
for a problem is one of the kernel drivers prividing data to lm-sensors
or, rather, the sensors command (and libsensors). If you encounter problems,
the following tests are recommended.

  • Check enabled sensors with the ‘sensors’ command. Observe and, if there
    are errors, write down your test steps and report.
  • If any problems are observed while running the ‘sensors’ command, disable
    (unload) kernel drivers one after another. After unloading a driver, run
    the ‘sensors’ command again and observe if the error is gone. If it is,
    you found the problematic driver. Record your tests and report to the driver
    maintainer.
  • If problems are observed while using libsensors from another application,
    the same procedure applies (though it is recommended to perform the test
    with the sensors command first). Again, after identifying the offending
    driver, record and report your results to the driver maintainer.
  • If this does not help, try to run ptrace on the sensors command and/or
    the application using libsensors. If you find any anormalies, record
    your results and report.
11

Thank you! I think, reading your post, the problem lies that the fan sensors are ISA instead of I2C. If I understand correctly from other posts online, ISA are always loaded manually, instead of automatically, and that’s the reason I have to set everything myself, instead.

12

There are some github “Issues” for ASUS motherboards – worth checking to see if any apply to your model.

13

Yep! In fact, this is the one that applies, as I stated in the original post. I know what to do to load the sensors and make them work. My confusion arises because of posts like the ones from Phoronix: https://www.phoronix.com/news/ASUS-X670E-PLUS-EC-Sensors

They say that sensor compat is being included since 6.14, and I thought that meant automatic detection.

I guess I need to study a bit more on why i2c is automatically done, but isa needs manual loading and settings.