From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Apr 2 10:08:31 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DA1E89CB for ; Tue, 2 Apr 2013 10:08:31 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@qeng-ho.org) Received: from blue.qeng-ho.org (blue.qeng-ho.org [217.155.128.241]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7A6A7756 for ; Tue, 2 Apr 2013 10:08:31 +0000 (UTC) Received: from fileserver.home.qeng-ho.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by fileserver.home.qeng-ho.org (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id r32A8Mxa082401; Tue, 2 Apr 2013 11:08:24 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from freebsd@qeng-ho.org) Message-ID: <515AAE16.9030707@qeng-ho.org> Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:08:22 +0100 From: Arthur Chance User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130309 Thunderbird/17.0.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Subject: Re: Recipie for CPU souffle' References: <8363.1364871722@server1.tristatelogic.com> In-Reply-To: <8363.1364871722@server1.tristatelogic.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:08:31 -0000 On 04/02/13 04:02, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: [Overheating CPU war story snipped.] > I don't know what to make of this, except to suspect that some loose > wires inside my case got in the way of the CPU fan turning. (I am > not neat like some folks. The inside of myu case _is_ really rather > sloppy, so this could easly have happened.) I've had a fan jam that way. Cable ties are your friends. > I've now installed mbmon and xmbmon and will be watching the CPU temp > closely for awhile. > > I really wish that one or the other of those tools allowed setting a > threshold CPU temp, beyond which the tool would emit an ear piercing > alarm via the motherboard speaker... you know.. in case the regular > external stereo speakers are turned off. > > > What *is* the best way to achieve the above effect, i.e. to arrange > for the machine to scream for help in case it is getting too hot? > > I don't want it to just die, like it is doing now. I want it to scream > so that I can rush over and at least try to do an orderly shutdown. > > > > > Regards, > rfg > > > P.S. I am loading the system pretty heavily now, and have been for the > last 20+ minutes, and xmbmon is showing me a nice constant 31c for the > CPU temp. So for the moment at least, all is well. > > P.P.S. I have a (relatively) monster sized heatsink in this system, and > it sits atop a quite modest 2.7GHz single-core Athlon, so it is not at > all surprising that the ``stable'' CPU temp is around 30c (86f). I tend to use Intel processors so I'm not familiar with your exact processor, but does the amdtemp kernel module work for it? If so, you could write a shell script that loops doing "sysctl -n dev.cpu..temperature" for suitable values of and do whatever you like when/if the temperature goes above a threshold. "man speaker" and looking at /usr/sbin/spkrtest might be useful, just remember you'll probably have to "kldload speaker" first.