phosphor-regulators

Overview

The phosphor-regulators application configures and monitors voltage regulators. The application is controlled by a JSON configuration file.

The application does not control how voltage regulators are enabled or how to monitor their Power Good (pgood) status. Those operations are typically performed by power sequencer hardware and the phosphor-power-sequencer application.

Note: Many changes have been made to this documentation to define enhancements to the multiple chassis support. These enhancements are not yet implemented in this application. The enhancements are also dependent on the planned new phosphor-chassis-power application. This disclaimer will be removed when this support is fully implemented.

Application

phosphor-regulators is a single-threaded C++ executable. It is a 'daemon' process that runs continually. The application is launched by systemd when the BMC reaches the Ready state and before the system is powered on.

The application is driven by a system-specific JSON configuration file. The JSON file is found and parsed at runtime. The parsing process creates a collection of C++ objects. These objects implement the regulator configuration and monitoring behavior that was specified in the JSON file.

See Internal Design for more information.

Configuring voltage regulators

phosphor-regulators can modify the configuration of voltage regulators, such as modifying the output voltage or overcurrent limits.

See Regulator Configuration for more information.

Monitoring voltage regulators

phosphor-regulators supports two types of regulator monitoring:

  • Sensor monitoring
    • Reading sensor values such as voltage output and temperature
  • Phase fault monitoring
    • Checking if a redundant regulator phase has failed

See Regulator Monitoring for more information.

JSON configuration file

The JSON configuration file defines the following:

  • Voltage regulators in the system.
  • Operations to perform on those regulators, such as configuration or sensor monitoring.

Configuration files are stored in the config_files directory.

See the configuration file documentation for information on the file format, validation tool, and installation directories.

Multiple chassis systems

A BMC-based system can contain one or more chassis. A chassis is typically a physical enclosure that contains system components such as CPUs, fans, power supplies, and PCIe cards.

See Multiple Chassis for more information.

Testing

Automated test cases exist for most of the code in this application. See Testing for more information.