MSI P6N Platinum/SLI support for Fintek 71882

[a7thson]

I've owned a new system based on the MSI P6N Platinum motherboard for about three weeks now and have had success in getting pretty much everything working under x86_64 Gentoo. As of last week, this includes support for the internal sensors via lm-sensors, thanks to a recent (and still early in development) patch that was just posted to the lm-sensors mailing list. It was developed for a different motherboard which uses the same chip (the Fintek 71882 "super-io" chip). In recent lm-sensors, the chip is detected, but lm-sensors does not support any of its features and sensors-detect lists the driver as 'to-be-written'. That has changed but making it work will require grabbing the development svn version of lm-sensors, and removing the existing lm-sensors if necessary. So do:

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$sudo emerge --unmerge lm-sensors
$cd /usr/src
$svn checkout http://lm-sensors.org/svn/lm-sensors/branches/lm-sensors-3.0.0
$cd lm-sensors-3.0.0
$make
$sudo make install
$sudo ldconfig

This will install the needed libraries in /usr/local by default, so as not to pollute the "official" gentoo install too badly. The module will NOT work with earlier versions of lm-sensors so we have little choice but to try the svn. Now, assuming that was successful, we need to snatch up a copy of the in-development Fintek chip driver for our newly-built lm-sensors. I've not had any problems with using a recent svn build with this module or coretemp but YMMV.

The most recent files as of this date (6/30/2007) which I've tested are here:
Makefile
fintek71882.c
sensors.conf

Put the (simple) Makefile and driver fintek71882.c in a convenient directory, 'make', and append the provided sensors.conf to your existing /etc/sensors.conf. It may be necessary to make some minor changes to the config depending upon the configuratiion of your motherboard.

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$cd /usr/src
$mkdir fintek-devel
$cd fintek-devel
$curl http://lists.lm-sensors.org/pipermail/lm-sensors/attachments/20070624/4fef1169/attachment-0003.obj > fintek71882.c
$curl http://lists.lm-sensors.org/pipermail/lm-sensors/attachments/20070624/4fef1169/attachment-0004.obj > sensors.conf
$curl http://lists.lm-sensors.org/pipermail/lm-sensors/attachments/20070624/4fef1169/attachment-0005.obj > Makefile
$make

then reboot... and, as root, try to insert the module (assuming hwmon support is compiled in-kernel or the module is first loaded).

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#insmod /usr/src/fintek-devel/fintek71882.ko
#dmesg | grep -i F71882
f71882fg: Not a Fintek device
f71882fg: Found F71882FG chip at 0xa00, revision 32

The 'Not a Fintek device' may or may not appear, but does not seem to affect anything so long as the other message shows up afterwards. Now we can see the nice sensors information.

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#sensors

f71882fg-isa-0a00
Adapter: ISA adapter
3.3V:            +3.38 V
Vcore:           +1.14 V
Vdimm:           +1.65 V
Vchip:           +1.22 V
+5V:             +4.87 V
12V:            +13.86 V
5VSB:            +4.62 V
3VSB:            +3.38 V
Battery:         +3.07 V
CPUFAN:         2392 RPM
SYSFAN1:        1424 RPM
SYSFAN2:        1054 RPM
CPU:             +31.0 C  (high = +75.0 C, hyst =  +4.0 C)  sensor = transistor  
temp1_crit:      +75.0 C  (hyst =  +4.0 C)                  
System:          +35.0 C  (high = +85.0 C, hyst =  +4.0 C)  sensor = transistor  
temp2_crit:     +100.0 C  (hyst =  +4.0 C)                  

I can't vouch for the accuracy of all readings, but can only say that it seems very consistent with what I've seen from my system BIOS readings (and Windows utility programs that display this info, like that provided by MSI with the P6N Plat). There are a number of other motherboards which use this chip and I would guess it will work similarly but have only tested on the P6N. Note that currently, only hardware monitoring support is available, no fan control or other tweaking will be available yet. But I would assume from reading the recent posts on the lists that it will be coming in the near future.

I hope that someone out there finds this information useful!

[esculapio]

Gracias, funciona perfecto, espero que pronto este en el kernel.
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/55/screenshotws0.jpg

[a7thson]

Congratulations, and I hope that the little tutorial was largely error-free... There is also a new version of the fintek driver just posted on lm-sensors but I've yet to see any reports on it, or to try the new version (which still does not include writable fan device for PWM fan control) but will post when I do.

Now it remains to go and do something nice with it I got bored this weekend and hacked up a little display script for my new system (as described in the .sig below) and its freshly-arrived Logitech G15 keyboard, as you can see here, with a little more detailed view of the LCD screen here...

Gracias, funciona perfecto, espero que pronto este en el kernel.
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/55/screenshotws0.jpg

[Temujin]

I hope that someone out there finds this information useful!

Indeed, I now have hw monitoring (sans PWM fan control :( ). Thank you.
I just built my own custom Ubuntu 2.6.24rc4 kernel and the included f71882 module did not build (of course, all of the other hwmon drivers built automatically, but not the one I needed). I could not get it to build manually either; I had to get the copy you linked to.

Unfortunately, PWM support was not present in the included file either, so even if I had gotten it to build...

EDIT: forgot to mention I'm using an MSI K9AG Neo2 board w/AMD 690G chipset

[a7thson]

I hope that someone out there finds this information useful!

Indeed, I now have hw monitoring (sans PWM fan control ). Thank you.

glad to hear that it worked. about a week or so after I posted here, an lm-sensors developer released a new version of the driver, which is here. note that it is just the driver f71882.c itself, just put it in the same directory as the old version, use the same makefile and follow the same instructions. it only made a few minor changes (as documented in the post). unfortunately as far as I'm aware, no additional work on improving the driver has taken place - so work on the driver has been about as sporadic as my posting behavior in 2007 . I did get the sense in browsing through some earlier posts on the lm-sensors list that there are some peculiarities with how the chip handles fan control, and that's confirmed by the comments to this post. so I assume that plus lack of a qualified and interested party has put it on hold (hopefully temporarily). the tech specs on the Fintek superchip are available if you want to have a go at it though see here. it worked for me. I wouldn't recommend polluting your kernel modules directory with testing-grade stuff though, I just put this in a convenient development/source directory and add a /etc/conf.d/local.start entry that uses insmod to insert it on boot.

EDIT: forgot to mention I'm using an MSI K9AG Neo2 board w/AMD 690G chipset

cool, another confirmed board that works with the driver, we're up to 3 now plus whatever the lm-sensors list tested it with (including MSI P965 among others). I'd presume it will work with a number of other MSI boards of similar vintage (2006-2007) as well.