Monitor CPU Temperature in Ubuntu

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Monitor CPU Temperature in Ubuntu

The ability to monitor your CPU temperature and other hardware performance is a good idea. I recently replaced the CPU fan with a quieter one and wanted to make sure that it was keeping things cool enough.

The module that monitors all the various sensors on your motherboard is lm-sensors. Installing it is simple enough.

This article was written using Version 7.04 (April 2007) of Ubuntu.

Recent comments on our community forum indicate that lm-sensors may not working in the current version 8.04 (April 2008).

Using Sudo to install lm-sensors

Open a terminal window.

Enter the command:

sudo apt-get install lm-sensors

Enter your root password and away you go.

Configuring lm-sensors

It is not going to do much good until you add the appropriate hooks into the system.

Again, in the terminal window, enter the command:

sudo sensors-detect

It will as you a bunch of questions that you enter YES to and then shows you a summary of the probes and the findings. It will offer to update /etc/modules automatically and you might as well let it do so otherwise you have to type it in yourself.

Restart Ubuntu.

Installing a Monitor.

Select Add/Remove... under the Applications menu item to open up the "Add/Remove Applications" window. Type in sensors into the search box, press enter, and see what comes up.

If necessary, change the Show box from "Supported Ubuntu applications" to "All available Applications" and the list should expand. Find ""X Sensors"" and select it.

Press the "Apply" button. Up comes a confirmation screen to "Apply the following changes". Press the "Apply" button. You will be prompted for your password to perform administrative tasks. Enter it and away we go. Ubuntu will download and install the necessary files.

Once it is installed, just run it. Look under the Applications / System tools menu. It should display all the various sensor measurements that it found sensors for -- voltages, temperatures, fan speeds.

Watch the displays -- my computer shows me the temperatures when I reboot, and for me, the CPU and Motherboard temperatures appear to be reversed in xsensors. Odd but apparently not that unusual.

Tags: Ubuntu

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