HP WMI Driver To Expose More Sensors Under Linux For Business-Class Systems

A patch was posted this week introducing a new "hp-wmi-sensors" Linux kernel driver for HP business-class computers for exposing WMI sensor functionality.

For newer HP desktops and laptops -- primarily of their "business class" hardware -- that support their current Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interface, this new driver will allow reading those sensors under Linux. This is similar to the various WMI drivers we've seen under Linux for ASUS laptops, Gigabyte motherboards, and more.

James Seo as the developer who posted the hp-wmi-sensors driver patch commented:

"Hewlett-Packard business-class computers report hardware monitoring information via WMI. This driver pulls that information into hwmon. Initial support is implemented for temperature, voltage, current, and fan speed sensor types.

HP's WMI implementation permits many other types of numeric sensors. For that reason, a debugfs interface is also provided to enumerate all numeric sensors visible on the WMI side. This should facilitate adding support for other sensor types in the future.

Tested on a HP Z420 and a HP EliteOne 800 G1.

Note that these models have only temperature and fan speed sensors, so other sensor types have not been confirmed working yet. However, the driver should still work as expected. A 2005 HP whitepaper describes the relevant MOF definition and sensor value calculation, and reverse engineering confirms HP's official Performance Advisor utility continues to comply with both of them."

More details via this new HP WMI sensors driver now under going review can be found on the kernel mailing list.