[lm-sensors] Motherboard data collection

[lm-sensors] Motherboard data collection

[Holger Oehm]

Hi,

is there by now any kind of database that hosts motherboard data?

Or asked the other way round: I got a sensors.conf for my
"Soyo SY-P4I875P Dragon 2 Platinum Edition" working (somehow working,
I asked Soyo support for data, but didnt recieve an answer yet. So its just
wild guessing, but at least I have some values that seem to make sense.)

I tried several times searches on the web without success to get some info
how to treat my motherboard. Now I wonder if I am the first to get it running,
is there some place I should publish the thing?

I could put it on my own webpages, but nobody would look there, would they?

Best regards,
Holger.

-- 
Holger Oehm <holger.oehm@holger-oehm.de>
Public key <A HREF="http://www.holger-oehm.de/public-key.asc">here</A>,
KeyID: B50E51A9, Key-Length: 1024 Bit,
Key fingerprint: E92A 5C2C 497A 44ED 23C0  DB66 1DD9 3EF7 B50E 51A9
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[lm-sensors] Motherboard data collection

[Jean Delvare]

Hi Holger,

> is there by now any kind of database that hosts motherboard data?

Unfortunately not, although the need exists and some tries were made.

> Or asked the other way round: I got a sensors.conf for my
> "Soyo SY-P4I875P Dragon 2 Platinum Edition" working (somehow working,
> I asked Soyo support for data, but didnt recieve an answer yet. So its
> just wild guessing, but at least I have some values that seem to make
> sense.)
>
> I tried several times searches on the web without success to get some
> info how to treat my motherboard. Now I wonder if I am the first to get
> it running, is there some place I should publish the thing?

There is no formal place, but you could simply send it to this
mailing-list. It'll get archived and eventually indexed by Google.
Providing you give it a relevant name, people searching for the data
should find it there.

> I could put it on my own webpages, but nobody would look there, would
> they?

If your page happens to be indexed by search engines, they will. I put my
own configuration file on my website a few days ago for that reason.

--
Jean Delvare

[lm-sensors] Motherboard data collection

[Holger Oehm]

On Thursday 19 May 2005 12:08, Jean Delvare wrote:
> [...]
> > is there by now any kind of database that hosts motherboard data?
> Unfortunately not, although the need exists and some tries were made.

Hmm, they failed? Why? Is it just that collecting the data would mean
a *lot* of work? Or would you say it simply cant be done?
What if someone would volunteer to give it a try? (Probably one of my
worst ideas lately ;-)

> > [...]. Now I wonder if I am the first to get
> > it running, is there some place I should publish the thing?
> 
> There is no formal place, but you could simply send it to this
> mailing-list. It'll get archived and eventually indexed by Google.
> Providing you give it a relevant name, people searching for the data
> should find it there.

Well, creating some formal place for board-sorted sensors.conf files
(for example somewhere on the lm_sensors page or just a folder structure 
in CVS) would not be the problem, I assume?

> > I could put it on my own webpages, but nobody would look there, would
> > they?
> 
> If your page happens to be indexed by search engines, they will. I put my
> own configuration file on my website a few days ago for that reason.

Ok, I have done that, here is a link:
http://www.holger-oehm.de/lm_sensors/sensors.conf-sy-p4i875p-dragon-2-platinum

Holger.

-- 
Holger Oehm <holger.oehm@holger-oehm.de>
Public key <A HREF="http://www.holger-oehm.de/public-key.asc">here</A>,
KeyID: B50E51A9, Key-Length: 1024 Bit,
Key fingerprint: E92A 5C2C 497A 44ED 23C0  DB66 1DD9 3EF7 B50E 51A9
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[lm-sensors] Motherboard data collection

[Jean Delvare]

Hallo Holger,

> > Unfortunately not, although the need exists and some tries were made.
>
> Hmm, they failed? Why? Is it just that collecting the data would mean
> a *lot* of work? Or would you say it simply cant be done?
> What if someone would volunteer to give it a try? (Probably one of my
> worst ideas lately ;-)

It can be done. The point was to build a system which would require next
to zero maintenance time: a web interface, where users could easily add
their own configuration files (wiki-like, in a way). But setting this up
requires a time and energy investment, which just didn't happen.

> Well, creating some formal place for board-sorted sensors.conf files
> (for example somewhere on the lm_sensors page or just a folder structure 
> in CVS) would not be the problem, I assume?

It would, and is what I had in mind in the first place too. Although much
more simple to set up, it would require work from us for every added or
modified configuration file, we can't really afford that.

Thanks,
--
Jean Delvare

[lm-sensors] Motherboard data collection

[Holger Oehm]

On Friday 20 May 2005 10:18, Jean Delvare wrote:
> 
> Hallo Holger,
> 
> > > Unfortunately not, although the need exists and some tries were made.
> >
> > Hmm, they failed? Why? Is it just that collecting the data would mean
> > a *lot* of work? Or would you say it simply cant be done?
> > What if someone would volunteer to give it a try? (Probably one of my
> > worst ideas lately ;-)
> 
> It can be done. The point was to build a system which would require next
> to zero maintenance time: a web interface, where users could easily add
> their own configuration files (wiki-like, in a way). But setting this up
> requires a time and energy investment, which just didn't happen.

Hi Jean,

Well, I invested some energy and time, and here is a URL:

http://sites.inka.de/penti/cgi-bin/lmsensor.pl

It is still a prototype and regrettably uploading sensor.confs does not work
on that webserver. (It did work at home, I suspect that the CGI.pm and/or
perl are too old on that machine).

The stuff is just one perl script using CGI.pm and a C executable I compiled with some
internals of the latest sensors lib (I wanted to make sure configs are valid when 
I store them). It stores uploaded files striped down (only valid tags, no comments) and
compressed.
I am thinking about how to add the possibility to sign configurations (like someone
who uses one of the configs and it works for him, he could sign it somehow (pgp?)).

Could you spare the time to have a look at it? I would appreciate your feedback very
much! 

Best regards,
Holger.

-- 
Holger Oehm <holger.oehm@holger-oehm.de>
Public key <A HREF="http://www.holger-oehm.de/public-key.asc">here</A>,
KeyID: B50E51A9, Key-Length: 1024 Bit,
Key fingerprint: E92A 5C2C 497A 44ED 23C0  DB66 1DD9 3EF7 B50E 51A9
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[lm-sensors] Motherboard data collection

[Mark Studebaker]

Holger Oehm wrote:
> On Friday 20 May 2005 10:18, Jean Delvare wrote:
> 
>>Hallo Holger,
>>
>>
>>>>Unfortunately not, although the need exists and some tries were made.
>>>
>>>Hmm, they failed? Why? Is it just that collecting the data would mean
>>>a *lot* of work? Or would you say it simply cant be done?
>>>What if someone would volunteer to give it a try? (Probably one of my
>>>worst ideas lately ;-)
>>
>>It can be done. The point was to build a system which would require next
>>to zero maintenance time: a web interface, where users could easily add
>>their own configuration files (wiki-like, in a way). But setting this up
>>requires a time and energy investment, which just didn't happen.
> 
> 
> Hi Jean,
> 
> Well, I invested some energy and time, and here is a URL:
> 
> http://sites.inka.de/penti/cgi-bin/lmsensor.pl
> 
> It is still a prototype and regrettably uploading sensor.confs does not work
> on that webserver. (It did work at home, I suspect that the CGI.pm and/or
> perl are too old on that machine).
> 
> The stuff is just one perl script using CGI.pm and a C executable I compiled with some
> internals of the latest sensors lib (I wanted to make sure configs are valid when 
> I store them). It stores uploaded files striped down (only valid tags, no comments) and
> compressed.
> I am thinking about how to add the possibility to sign configurations (like someone
> who uses one of the configs and it works for him, he could sign it somehow (pgp?)).
> 
> Could you spare the time to have a look at it? I would appreciate your feedback very
> much! 
> 
> Best regards,
> Holger.
> 

looks like a good start  to me!

[lm-sensors] Motherboard data collection

[Holger Oehm]

On Saturday 11 June 2005 21:06, Mark Studebaker wrote:
> Holger Oehm wrote:
> > On Friday 20 May 2005 10:18, Jean Delvare wrote:
> >>It can be done. The point was to build a system which would require next
> >>to zero maintenance time: a web interface, where users could easily add
> >>their own configuration files (wiki-like, in a way). But setting this up
> >>requires a time and energy investment, which just didn't happen.
> > 
> > Hi Jean,
> > 
> > Well, I invested some energy and time, and here is a URL:
> > http://sites.inka.de/penti/cgi-bin/lmsensor.pl
> > 
> > It is still a prototype and regrettably uploading sensor.confs does not work
> > on that webserver. (It did work at home, I suspect that the CGI.pm and/or
> > perl are too old on that machine).
> 
> looks like a good start  to me!

Hi Mark,

Whoa, feedback! Thanks a lot! I already had assumed nobody was 
interested at all, so I didn't continue with that stuff.

Best wishes,
Holger.

-- 
Holger Oehm <holger.oehm@holger-oehm.de>
Public key <A HREF="http://www.holger-oehm.de/public-key.asc">here</A>,
KeyID: B50E51A9, Key-Length: 1024 Bit,
Key fingerprint: E92A 5C2C 497A 44ED 23C0  DB66 1DD9 3EF7 B50E 51A9
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[lm-sensors] Motherboard data collection

[Jean Delvare]

Hi Holger,

Please forgive me for the delay (hum hum...)

> Well, I invested some energy and time, and here is a URL:
> 
> http://sites.inka.de/penti/cgi-bin/lmsensor.pl

As someone asked to me today if such a system existed and it took me 15
minutes to find the URL back, I have been adding a section for
motherboard configuration file databases in our "useful addresses"
document.

http://www2.lm-sensors.nu/~lm78/cvs/lm_sensors2/doc/useful_addresses.html#sensorsconfdb

> It is still a prototype and regrettably uploading sensor.confs does
> not work on that webserver. (It did work at home, I suspect that the
> CGI.pm and/or perl are too old on that machine).

I just tried and actually it failed. I was able to create an entry for
my motherboard maker, my motherboard model, but the configuration file
upload failed. This definitely needs fixing (or at least a workaround),
else this database is useless. Can't you upgrade CGI.pm or perl or fix
whatever is causing the problem?

You could easily do without the upload, BTW. Just add a large text area
on the page, and let the user copy/paste in it. It might be less
convenient than upload, but better than a non-working upload.

> The stuff is just one perl script using CGI.pm and a C executable I
> compiled with some internals of the latest sensors lib (I wanted to
> make sure configs are valid when I store them).

It's probably overkill to use C and stuff from libsensors to do this. I
understand that some check of the file is needed so as to make sure that
people don't upload crap, but that should be very easy to do something
simple in perl.

> It stores uploaded files striped down (only valid tags, no comments)
> and compressed.

Stripping the comments is a very bad idea if you want my opinion.
Comments in sensors.conf files are very useful, you are removing most of
the added value if you remove them. Take a look at the configuration
file I published for my motherboard:

http://khali.linux-fr.org/devel/lm-sensors/sensors-Gigabyte-K8V-Ultra-939.conf

You'll see it has pretty useful comments. Strip them down, and the file
is not even worth being left online. Also, even with all the comments,
not compressed, the file is less than 4 kB in size. I wouldn't expect
such a database to grow larger than 2000 files (and I am being very
optimistic), this would be around 8 MB of data. By today's standards it
is not much, and at any rate not enough to justify stripping, and
possibly not even compression.

> I am thinking about how to add the possibility to sign configurations
> (like someone who uses one of the configs and it works for him, he
> could sign it somehow (pgp?)).

Overkill IMHO. All we need is a place where people can upload
configurations and others can download them. We don't need this to be
official or anything.

> Could you spare the time to have a look at it? I would appreciate your
> feedback very much! 

Well, I just gave it a try, and found that the process to add a
configuration file was rather long, due to the fact that the addition of
the manufacturer and the model are separate steps. You should be able to
do it all in one flow:

1* Select motherboard maker OR add it if it doesn't exist.

2* Select motherboard model OR add it if it doesn't exist.

3* Upload the configuration file.

Also, you should have comments on what fields are used for what. It
looks to me like only the "long" motherboard maker and product names are
used. What are the short ones for? Internal use? Can't they be filled in
automatically from the long names?

Put in short, you have to consider the interface from the eyes of the
random user who wants to upload a configuration file. He/she must not
have to wonder what is what, and the operation must be as
straightforward as possible, that is, fill in fields and click OK a
couple of times, and that's all. Else, nobody will add data and the base
will be useless.

Thanks,
-- 
Jean Delvare