[lm-sensors] lm87 alarm threshold changed mysteriously

[david.knierim@gmail.com (David Knierim)]

We have a product based on the Intel E7501 chipset which uses two LM87
sensor chips and the i2c-i801 bus driver.  We have fielded several
hundred of these boxes over the past two years.  They are all running
Red Hat 9 with the version of sensors that came with it (the rpm
version is 2.6.5-5).  Yes, I know this an ancient release...

I got a call yesterday that one of the boxes had started getting
voltage alarms.  After some investigation, I determined the problem
was that the low voltage alarm threshold for the +V2.5 power plane had
changed to 3.32V (from the normal value of 2.37V.   The high voltage
threshold had not changed for the normal setting of  2.61V.   The
measured voltage of 2.48V looked fine, too.

After running sensors -s, the problem went away (as I expected it to).

So I have a bunch of questions:
1 - is it likely that this problem would be fixed in a newer release
of lm_sensors?
2 - if it's not fixed, how would one track down the problem so we could fix it?
3 - is it possible this is a hardware problem?
4 - Any thoughs on recovering from problem in a more automated fashion
until a fix is found?

Any thoughts are welcome.

David