opteron 146 thoughts on motherboards

[Mark Hahn]

> > that I haven't thought of. I'm not sure I fully understand what
> > lm_sensors will give you -- is this the ability to remotely check things
> > like the CPU temperature? Using SNMP? 
> lm_sensors is the underlaying code for accessing SMBus implementations. SMBus 
> (System Management Bus) is a very simple serial bus based on I2C that is used 
> to monitor the system. What can be monitored depends on the board but usually 
> its things like temperatures, voltages and fan speeds. I've seen PCI bus 

right.  for interest, "real" servers also tend to have IPMI, 
which is a network-able standard that often includes a small
coprocessor, and also gives access via SMBus sensors.  among the 
most valuable features of IPMI-type remote-management interfaces
is the ability to cold/warm reset, power on/off, and often have 
some access the bios/console.

I'm not sure why, but SNMP doesn't seem to go along with IPMI-type
remote management widgets.

regards, mark hahn.