OpenBSD Hardware Sensors Framework

Constantine A. Murenin

Abstract

In this talk, we will discuss the past and present history and the design principles of the OpenBSD hardware sensors framework. Sensors framework provides a unified interface for storing, registering and accessing information about hardware monitoring sensors. Sensor types include, but are not limited to, temperature, voltage, fan RPM, time offset and logical drive status. The framework spans sensor_attach(9), sysctl(3), sysctl(8), sensorsd(8), ntpd(8), snmpd(8) and more than 67 drivers, ranging from I2C temperature sensors and Super I/O hardware monitors to IPMI, RAID and SCSI enclosures. Several third-party tools are also available, for example, a plug-in for Nagios and ports/sysutils/symon. Originally based on some ideas from NetBSD, the framework has sustained many improvements in OpenBSD, and was ported and committed to FreeBSD and DragonFly BSD.

Speaker

Constantine A. Murenin is an MMath graduate student at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo (CA). Prior to his graduate appointment, Constantine attended and subsequently graduated from East Carolina University (US) and De Montfort University (UK), receiving two bachelor degrees in computer science, with honors and honours respectively. A FreeBSD Google Summer of Code 2007 Student, OpenBSD Committer and Mozilla Contributor, Constantine's interests range from standards compliance and usability at all levels, to quiet computing and hardware monitoring. http://Constantine.SU/