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View Full Version : Advice caution when using lmsensors and similar *probing* software or modules .


rajeev1204
February 3rd, 2009, 01:18 PM
hi.

A long while ago i had posted a thread asking if software can damage hardware beyond repair.Most replied in the negative.

Well,especially when using software which *probes* for temperature and similar.it gives me the creeps.

I would say users exercise caution when recommending installation of such software to users on these forums,I was about to install lmsensors but now have permanently decided against it.

Look what lmsensors did to a phenom cpu .(fixed later with a patch)

http://www.lm-sensors.org/wiki/Configurations/Sapphire/AM2RD790




Pretty scary.



regards

rajeev.
JillSwift
February 3rd, 2009, 02:15 PM
Kind of a FUDish way of putting it, isnt' that?

One dead CPU out of thousands of installations, and the problem's been identified and handled. Kudos to the lm-sensors team for hopping on it like that.
Polygon
February 3rd, 2009, 02:20 PM
yeah really. ive ran it countless times on my old computer, and ran it again when i got my new computer. Nothing has been 'bricked' yet. It sucks that that guys cpu got destroyed but it was not entirely lm sensors's fault, it was also a kernel problem which most likely should of stopped them from doing anything that could damage the hardware.

now it is fixed, and we can all rejoice =)
rajeev1204
February 3rd, 2009, 02:58 PM
Kind of a FUDish way of putting it, isnt' that?

One dead CPU out of thousands of installations, and the problem's been identified and handled. Kudos to the lm-sensors team for hopping on it like that.


Ya but if the user wasnt smart enough to report it, it wouldnt have been isolated.You think any user would have wildly guessed that lm sensors could be reason for the CPU going dead? Not me.Call me ignorant ,but i would have contacted AMD thinking it was a faulty CPU.That one CPU could have been yours,And its damn expensive too.

Anyways, good that it has been fixed.And yes,kudos the lm-sensors team looked into it.
JillSwift
February 3rd, 2009, 03:39 PM
That one CPU could have been yours,And its damn expensive too.Well, by that logic...


Shouldn't own anything valuable, there have been burglaries.
Shouldn't drive a car, there have been mechanical failures.
Shouldn't eat at restaurants, there have been incidents of tainted food.

Life gets awfully boring - if rather stressful - if all you do is avoid even the tiniest risk. :)
Trail
February 3rd, 2009, 03:53 PM
I call it a hardware bug, if hardware of any sort can potentially be damaged by software operations.
binbash
February 3rd, 2009, 04:00 PM
There was a bug at UBUNTU which destroys some wifi cards.Then you should not recommend UBUNTU also.I dont agree with you
p_quarles
February 3rd, 2009, 04:22 PM
I'm not sure why lm-sensors would be any worse than, say, a web browser. I mean, it is indeed probing software, but it's not like it puts a thermometer on top of your motherboard. It's just querying information that is already on your system, but in some cases isn't readily accessible.
Polygon
February 4th, 2009, 02:43 AM
I'm not sure why lm-sensors would be any worse than, say, a web browser. I mean, it is indeed probing software, but it's not like it puts a thermometer on top of your motherboard. It's just querying information that is already on your system, but in some cases isn't readily accessible.

lm-sensors does do some scary stuff, as in it probes the varios parts of your hardware that usually doesnt read by normal programs,and in this case it probed the wrong part of the CPU and the cpu freaked out (most likely was a cpu bug as well, but yeah)