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Date:      Thu, 17 Jan 2013 21:59:12 +0100
From:      Matthew Rezny <mrezny@hexaneinc.com>
To:        <freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org>
Subject:   PowerMac G5 spurious sensor readings
Message-ID:  <7700.1358456352@hexaneinc.com>

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I have a G5 of the first model (PowerMac7,2) on which I've been using FreeB=
SD/ppc64 for over a year. Today, it suddenly rebooted. Not the first time b=
y any means, but this is the first time I found the following log message:
Jan 17 17:32:19 powermac kernel: WARNING: Current temperature (MLB MAX6690 =
AMB:127.8 C) exceeds critical temperature (80.0 C)! Shutting down!

This is the first time I have seen such a message. After reboot, that senso=
r shows a temperature near 30C, which seems appropriate. The reading of 127=
.8C looks suspiciously like a max value. My only guess is there was a bad r=
ead that resulted in=20
the sensor value going over the threshold. That raises a question in my min=
d as to whether there is any filtering or sanity checking of the data. Coul=
d a single bad read cause the threshold to be exceeded and trigger shutdown=
 immediately, or would=20
the excessive value have to be returned from that sensor multiple times for=
 it to be believed an acted upon?

$ uname -a
FreeBSD powermac 9.1-RC1 FreeBSD 9.1-RC1 #0: Thu Aug 16 00:43:39 UTC 2012  =
   root@anacreon.physics.wisc.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC64  powerpc

The build is a bit old, though I wouldn't expect too much change to the cod=
e in question since then. I will update to 9.1-RELEASE or -STABLE in the ne=
xt few days, but as this is a problem that has happened once in over a year=
, I wouldn't call it=20
resolved just by a quick failure to reproduce after updating.

I was already planning to do an update after the box has completed it's cur=
rent task. I noticed a problem with excessive output causing the console to=
 hang. A couple days ago I found the machine apparently hung in that the ke=
yboard and mouse were=20
not responsive, but I found it was still alive on the network and I could s=
sh in to reboot. The only clues were no buffer space for dmesg to output an=
ything before reboot, and a rather full /var/log/messages file which had ex=
hausted the drive.=20
Under the same workload (and after freeing some drive space), the problem r=
eoccurred in a matter of hours, but this time with me watching. While runni=
ng ddrescue against a drive with some bad sectors, read errors flood the co=
nsole in spurts. When=20
some dozens of read errors are displayed at once, the console scrolls whole=
 pages by in a fraction of a second, and then goes dead. Messages that shou=
ld go to console are not shown on screen but are in the log. Attempts to sw=
itch virtual console or=20
to reboot are not successful, but ssh access continues to work and the box =
is clearly still processing other workloads. The only sign of life from the=
 console are the messages about flushing buffers just before completion of =
the reboot commanded=20
via ssh.





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