Reading AMD Opteron temperature sensors in FreeNAS 11.1

[Dwarf Cavendish]

I am currently running FreeNAS 11.1U6 on an HPE Microserver gen10. It has an AMD Opteron X3216 CPU. For the purpose of monitoring system health, I would like to be able to read out its temperature sensors.

I have consulted this guide and this thread which lead me to the following loader tunables:

Code:

amdtemp_load="YES"
hint.acpi_throttle.0.disabled="YES" # cool'n'quiet
hw.pci.realloc_bars="1" # needed for screen output on Microserver gen10

However, I still cannot read any temperatures:

Code:

# sysctl -a | grep -i temp
device  amdtemp
device  coretemp
net.inet6.ip6.use_tempaddr: 0
net.inet6.ip6.temppltime: 86400
net.inet6.ip6.tempvltime: 604800
net.inet6.ip6.prefer_tempaddr: 0
hw.sfxge.restart_attempts: 3
hw.usb.template: 0
kstat.zfs.misc.zcompstats.attempts: 16996

This was the same both with and without the cool'n'quiet tunable in place. Am I missing something...?

 

[joeschmuck]

Also try to grep "cpu" vice "temp" jsut to see what other values show up.

Are you running FreeNAS in a VM, like maybe on VMware ESXi ? Just asking because that is likely to limit what you can access. My system is unable to access CPU temps because of this and I gave up after a few months of testing. Also, if there are any further details on your system configuration that may be of interest, please list it.

 

[Dwarf Cavendish]

Alas, no luck grepping for cpu. Lots of info, but no temperatures. Furthermore, I am not using any kind of hypervisor, just FreeNAS directly on the hardware. HPE gives the following specs, I don't think there is anything interesting to see there...?

One feature that this machine has is to emulate pressing the power button when the CPU temperature reaches 85°C. The machine has a pretty noisy fan, so I stowed it away in the fuse box cabinet. On warm summer days, it happened a couple of times that I found my server offline all of a sudden, presumably because of an emergency thermal shutdown, so on hot days I either turn off my server or open the cabinet's door. Not ideal. Above the cabinet's door, there is a board with decorative ventilation holes, but apparently those are not always enough.

Being able to read the temperature sensors would be very helpful for me; basically I want to know whether I'm perhaps better off building a machine myself that has a more tolerable noise level so that I can place it in a more well-ventilated area of the house.

One thing that I did notice:

Code:

# kldload amdtemp
kldload: can't load amdtemp: No such file or directory

This would suggest that FreeNAS does not come with support for AMD sensors. However:

Code:

$ sysctl -a | grep -i amdtemp
device  amdtemp

Now I'm a bit confused: apparently the kernel module does not exist, but it still could be loaded at boot time...?

 

[joeschmuck]

Now I'm a bit confused: apparently the kernel module does not exist, but it still could be loaded at boot time...?

I'm not 100% certain but it appears that the amdtemp module is already installed.

One feature that this machine has is to emulate pressing the power button when the CPU temperature reaches 85°C. The machine has a pretty noisy fan, so I stowed it away in the fuse box cabinet. On warm summer days, it happened a couple of times that I found my server offline all of a sudden, presumably because of an emergency thermal shutdown, so on hot days I either turn off my server or open the cabinet's door. Not ideal. Above the cabinet's door, there is a board with decorative ventilation holes, but apparently those are not always enough.

This is bad news for the longevity of your system. You need to store your NAS in a cooler place. If the fan noise is driving you nuts then you should consider replacing it with a quite fan and taking out of the closet. Read these following links as I don't know what kind of fan you have but these will provide you options. Tackle the real problem at hand. Also, what are your drive temps looking like? Bet they are high which means you will have a short life on those as well.

Gen 10 Fan Noise (read page 2)
6 Pin to 4 Pin Fan Connector

So fix the cooling problem and you should be happier. And as I understand it, your fan is a 120mm fan, possibly rated for over 3000 RPM, and as you said it is noisy. To find out your true specs you can read the manufacture label on the fan, look up the model on the internet and get the maximum RPM and maximum SCFM air flow, then find a quiet engineered fan that rotates slower and produces similar air flow. A slower spinning fan typically means less noise. If your fan is rated to to flow air at up to 3000 SCFM then you could try a fan rated at 2000 or 2200 SCFM and see how that sounds, it should be significantly less.

One other option that reduces noise by promoting better airflow is to modify the case, something I do all the time. When you look at the case where the fan is mounted you case see all those holes in the case, this creates a huge resistance to airflow. What you want to do is remove all that crap and then cover it with a wire fan cover. For your case do not open up any vent holes in the front of the case because your hard drives depend on air being pulled across them to cool them down. If you choose this route you will need to remove all the electronics so that while you are cutting the grid out, the metal filings do not stick to the electronics and damage it. Once you cut the grid out, clean it up so the hole edges are not sharp. It doesn't need to be perfectly round but try to put a good effort into it. You don't need the wire grill right away but you will want it as some point in time. So if you take this free option and it doesn't solve the problem, you can always switch to a slower RPM fan. Again, removing the crappy stamped grill holes will produce more effortless airflow for the case. I'm a silent CPU nut so I do this to all my cases. The sound of a fan in a silent room drives me to drink.

Time to grab a beer, I heard the heat pump fan running :)

 

[Dwarf Cavendish]

This is bad news for the longevity of your system. You need to store your NAS in a cooler place. If the fan noise is driving you nuts then you should consider replacing it with a quite fan and taking out of the closet.Read these following links as I don't know what kind of fan you have but these will provide you options. Tackle the real problem at hand. Also, what are your drive temps looking like? Bet they are high which means you will have a short life on those as well.

I know, I know... the other day I checked the drives and they were around 35°C, which seems fine to me. I don't remember the values in summer, though. But to be honest, I'd rather build something quieter myself using an Intel platform than mod this off the shelf Microserver. I have seen that Fujitsu offers ECC-capable motherboards that are pretty power-efficient. I then could keep the Microserver around for other purposes, such as a backup system. And ironically, I could probably make a small profit selling it, seeing that prices have gone up for these units since I bought it.

I have also seen the prices of SSDs come down pretty quickly the past couple of months. I only use a quarter of my 4TB and I don't exactly see the usage increase at a fast pace. At this rate I might very well replace the hard drives with 2TB SSDs next year and thus put a perfectly silent server in the living room or something.

Btw, I do appreciate the effort you put into that post :) .

 

[joeschmuck]

You could build a very quiet server if you desire, it's fairly easy but it will not be small. High Air Flow cases are where you need to be in order to obtain a quiet solution. Well I will take that back, it completely depends on what you are using your FreeNAS system for. If it's just a backup device then you could build a small unit but if you plan to transcode video content then you will likely need a larger case. That doesn't mean you can't tuck it into a corner. You could also mount a 140mm intake air fan and run it slow just for force air flow into the case. Fluid dynamics is important to take into consideration. As I said, I like ultra quiet computers and all of mine are. The only time I hear a fan is when I power on/reboot a system when the fan may go into full speed for a few seconds or when the fans get dirty and I need to blow the dust out of them, or if one is failing.

With all of that said you will find some good sites on the internet about how to produce a quiet computer such as silentpcreview.com . Also, do not think a water cooled system is quiet, it isn't. The water pump can be pretty loud. Just think of a fish air pump vibrating all the time, while it's not very loud, it's always there and can be annoying. You also need large radiator fans, those will typically be quieter than the pump.

Don't skimp on cost. Figure out how much CPU power and RAM you need before selecting the motherboard. Select the motherboard, a quiet power supply, and case that has the ability to add large fans. Think about air flow within the case. When you put together the system if you bought a case with a lot of fan openings, use some good tape to close off the unused openings unless they are part of your air inlet. Again, think about where the air will flow within the case, you want to keep all the components cool with some airflow.

Damn, how many times did I say airflow?

One other thing you might be able to do with your Gen 10 micro server, see if you can add a small fan internally to force air across the CPU heatsink. This will cool the CPU down more and mixed in with the exhaust air and might help reduce the Gen 10 single fan from speeding up frequently or at all possibly. For that internal fan you need to see if something would fit, put the largest side fan you can fit, run it from 7VDC vice 12VDC, and the mounting of it will be up to you, you could use Velcro straps, nylon ty-wraps, or make a metal mount if there is room for it. And again, cut out the rear of that fan grill to allow more airflow.

I know, I know... the other day I checked the drives and they were around 35°C, which seems fine to me.

That is not bad at all but you could use the command smartctl -x /dev/ada0 and look for the maximum temp value for drive ada0, then do that for all your drives. They typically maintain the highest temperature recorded for warranty purposes.

I hope this helps.

 

[Dwarf Cavendish]

You could build a very quiet server if you desire, it's fairly easy but it will not be small. High Air Flow cases are where you need to be in order to obtain a quiet solution. Well I will take that back, it completely depends on what you are using your FreeNAS system for. If it's just a backup device then you could build a small unit but if you plan to transcode video content then you will likely need a larger case. That doesn't mean you can't tuck it into a corner. You could also mount a 140mm intake air fan and run it slow just for force air flow into the case. Fluid dynamics is important to take into consideration. As I said, I like ultra quiet computers and all of mine are. The only time I hear a fan is when I power on/reboot a system when the fan may go into full speed for a few seconds or when the fans get dirty and I need to blow the dust out of them, or if one is failing.

I use it as a file server for a two person household. The workload is very light and the server spends most of its time just idling. I do occasionally use Plex, but not with transcoding. I just want my and my wife's stuff safe, automatically backed up to an external location and available whenever we to access anything. I think that scrubs and compiling stuff from ports are the most intensive things the system ever gets to do. I also very much doubt that I will ever need more than 2 drives.

And since you seem to share my sensitivity to noise: do you do anything special to reduce the noise of spinning disks?

With all of that said you will find some good sites on the internet about how to produce a quiet computer such as silentpcreview.com . Also, do not think a water cooled system is quiet, it isn't. The water pump can be pretty loud. Just think of a fish air pump vibrating all the time, while it's not very loud, it's always there and can be annoying. You also need large radiator fans, those will typically be quieter than the pump.

I happen to own a fish tank. It's in the living room and I went to great lengths to stuff as much dampening material as I could into the cabinet that houses the filter :p . Those 100Hz transformer hums are especially annoying to deal with.

Don't skimp on cost. Figure out how much CPU power and RAM you need before selecting the motherboard. Select the motherboard, a quiet power supply, and case that has the ability to add large fans. Think about air flow within the case. When you put together the system if you bought a case with a lot of fan openings, use some good tape to close off the unused openings unless they are part of your air inlet. Again, think about where the air will flow within the case, you want to keep all the components cool with some airflow.

But overspending isn't what I want either ;) . But I get it, skimping that leads to regrets isn't exactly fun.

One other thing you might be able to do with your Gen 10 micro server, see if you can add a small fan internally to force air across the CPU heatsink. This will cool the CPU down more and mixed in with the exhaust air and might help reduce the Gen 10 single fan from speeding up frequently or at all possibly. For that internal fan you need to see if something would fit, put the largest side fan you can fit, run it from 7VDC vice 12VDC, and the mounting of it will be up to you, you could use Velcro straps, nylon ty-wraps, or make a metal mount if there is room for it. And again, cut out the rear of that fan grill to allow more airflow.

Yeah, I'm not a fan (...) of the passively cooled CPU either. But I'd rather not void my warranty yet ;) .

That is not bad at all but you could use the command smartctl -x /dev/ada0 and look for the maximum temp value for drive ada0, then do that for all your drives. They typically maintain the highest temperature recorded for warranty purposes.

I hope this helps.

Well, at least some peace of mind:

Code:

# smartctl -x /dev/ada0 | grep -i temperature | grep -i lifetime
Lifetime	Min/Max Temperature:	 19/42 Celsius
# smartctl -x /dev/ada1 | grep -i temperature | grep -i lifetime
Lifetime	Min/Max Temperature:	 18/42 Celsius

With this, I am really starting to wonder whether I have received a faulty unit. Other than when just after having started the system I have never observed a high fan speed. Either that, or the air warms up so quickly that spinning up the fan doesn't help anymore and it only speeds up briefly before the system shuts itself down. Perhaps I should see if I can find a Linux distro that can read the unit's temperatures and see what happens when I put stress onto the CPU by something like finding primes. Or I should contact HPE to ask if this is normal. The models with a higher TDP CPU have a higher temperature threshold, perhaps only those models see a higher fan speed.

But be it that I need to have it serviced under warranty or not: having a spare unit around may not be a bad idea. You know, availability :) .

But all in all it's too bad that I cannot get measurements on this machine. Perhaps I get lucky with FreeNAS 11.2. Or perhaps I should file a feature request...?

 

[joeschmuck]

Glad the drive temps look good.

Make sure the interior is clean, especially the fan and air intakes, assuming it worked fine before hand.

Adding a CPU fan will not void your warranty.

 

[Dwarf Cavendish]

I just filed a feature request for adding support for reading these CPUs' temperatures. Having an empty temperature graph in the new FreeNAS GUI is a bit of an eyesore :) .

 

[Dwarf Cavendish]

Volunteering to test stuff on my hardware paid off: temperature sensor support is scheduled for 11.3-BETA1 now :D !

 

[tmikaeld]

I also have the Gen 10 and it keeps randomly shutting down due to "thermal issues" however, none of the stats show more than 30C on disks and 38C ambient, 50C on the CPU. I think this is caused by a FreeBSD bug?

UPDATE: It was actually very badly applied thermal paste on the CPU, there was a big "bubble" in the middle. Re-applied with new paste and now it's idle at 23C and at full 100% load on all cores it never goes above 59C....