The bigger issue that has been keeping this driver off the list to date is that the current PCF8584 (I2C bus controller) support must be rewritten to support multi-master operation and I've not mustered the enthusiasm to do it yet. Without such support, collisions result infrequently in misread or miswritten data that results in possibly bogus overheat conditions or LED states on the front status panel.
And since you asked, I'll poke a sore spot....Another issue is the difference between the Solaris driver and existing Linux envctrl driver(s). When the power-off temperature threshold is met, Linux does a friendly shutdown. Solaris does a hard power-off, which I feel is appropriate if we implement notification at the warning threshold (bbc-envctrl and my envctrltwo do this, but envctrl does not).
However, due to the oft-lamented issue of sparc and sparc64 refusing to power-down a system completely if it is on a serial console, you gain little benefit from halting to OBP. DaveM-- I'll float you a sysctl patch for sparc64 and sparc if you'd consider it and find the current "protection" valuable, otherwise perhaps machine_power_off should actually power-off, machine_halt should halt and userspace commands should get smarter about whether they ask the system to halt or power-off. As I recall, the Red Hat patches to /sbin/shutdown do provide the distinction, though the userspace may not have "closed the loop" to do the right thing by default on serial console installs.
To make a long answer short-- I can send you the work-in-progress driver off-list, but I recommend running it in debug mode so that shutdowns are not actually performed, otherwise you may get false positives. Let me know.
E Costas Magkos wrote:
Hi debian people,I have a Sun Enterprise E250 running sarge. E250 has a front panel with LEDs used as health and fault indicators, which apparently work only when the system is running Solaris.Does anyone know of a workaround for them to work under debian? Thanx in advance. ~kmag Costas Magkos Internet Systematics Lab NCSR "Demokritos" Athens, Greece