IT87 Linux Driver For Supporting Many Motherboard Sensors Is Facing Death

[Melcar]

Well damn. I need this for my Gaming K7 AM4 board. Hopefully something else comes along. As is, you can't even properly compile the driver on 4.16 and newer kernels.

[boxie]

oh bother, this is one of the things that I have used to get all the sensors reading

[scix]

As is, you can't even properly compile the driver on 4.16 and newer kernels.

Works for me, both with 4.17 and 4.18 series kernels.

[Space Heater]

Reading the bug reports on github, it looks like classic burnout. Guenter does a ton of work on the linux kernel as is, and it appears his work life balance was out of whack with all of the support requests. Sad to see.

[starshipeleven]

Reading the bug reports on github, it looks like classic burnout. Guenter does a ton of work on the linux kernel as is, and it appears his work life balance was out of whack with all of the support requests. Sad to see.

it's not burnout, in most bug reports he basically answers the same thing ("you need to get hardware docs") and does nothing (because there is nothing he can do).

I guess he recognized he can't do much about it and decided to drop the ball and focus on more interesting/important things.

[Adarion]

I wonder why the f. none of the big companies ever installs a second Guenter Roeck / Günter Röck. It feels for me like he's working on 1500 hwmon drivers for 20 years now and he probably could use some weight lifted off him. Those SIOs/ECs are just a sheer pain, you need them for sensor readings, fan control, battery charging on mobile devices, ... and whatnot and also for flashrom functionality (and thus Coreboot/LibreCore/Libreboot). But every now and then you find slightly different chips on mainboards (Laptops/Desktop) that just won't work with any driver. And then it is often years of waiting to get support. SuSE, RH, Canonical,... the fricken hardware companies that make these chips or solder them onto mainboards should do something about it. Release suitable specs to write drivers and employ folks to do so.

[Anty]

Yep - true problem is data sheets are not public. Reverse engineering is PITA.
I use this driver too

[malakudi]

groeck's messages in https://github.com/groeck/it87/issues/99 are related. It seems he is pissed off on this project.

[starshipeleven]

I wonder why the f. none of the big companies ever installs a second Guenter Roeck / Günter Röck.

Because none gives 2 shits about temperature sensors in servers anyway. Fan speed is controlled by firmware.

And no company cares about laptops and consumer hardware, because really, there is 0 profit in that.

the fricken hardware companies that make these chips or solder them onto mainboards should do something about it

Again, why should they? There is no profit in it, only risks.

It's the users that should pool resources to pay someone to work on that, as they are the only ones that actually need it.

[Weasel]

groeck's messages in https://github.com/groeck/it87/issues/99 are related. It seems he is pissed off on this project.

Reading that, I'd be pissed too. Users always think it's so easy to upstream something (on any project) just press 1 button and it's done, and they don't do anything about it, not even donate some little money (the laziest form of support for people who can afford it).

I still don't agree with him taking it down though. Could just put a big disclaimer as "THIS PROJECT IS NOT MAINTAINED ANYMORE, I WILL NOT READ ANY NEW ISSUES YOU HAVE ABOUT IT. FEEL FREE TO FORK IT!" on the Readme.md and just keep it lingering there for historical purposes.