[smartmontools-support] [PATCH] RFC: libata: Add hwmon support for SMART temperature sensors

[Guenter Roeck]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 11:09:12PM +0200, Linus Walleij wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 4:14 PM Tejun Heo <tj at kernel.org> wrote:
> 
> > So, one thought I have is that this doesn't really add any new
> > capabilities.  The information is fully discoverable from userspace
> > and interpreting the data requires quite a bit of heuristics.  So, do
> > we really need this in the kernel?
> 
> I do not intend to add all of SMART or anything just the temperature
> sensor(s).
> 
> This is because the kernel has a thermal framework, drivers/thermal,
> that can be used to define thermal zones and cooling devices for
> them. It has surfaced that some NAS devices rely on the sensor in
> the harddisk for their cooling policy, as they have no other sensor,
> but they have a fan.
> 
> To utilize the sensor for the thermal zone, it must be known to the
> kernel.
> 
Excellent point. Agreed, in this case it makes sense to have kernel
support for the sensors as hwmon device.

Guenter