HOWTO:Gkrellm and lm sensors

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Installing required packages 3 Which sensors are present? 4 Auto load of kernel module 5 Configuration of GKrellM

Introduction

Most modern motherboards are equiped with sensor(s) to measure (cpu)temperature, voltages and fanspeed. When your motherboard has a sensor most of the time you can see the readout values in one of the setup screens of the bios (not always). This is a manual to make these values visible on the desktop of Pardus. On http://www.lm-sensors.org/ there is more information.

Installing required packages

Open Package Manager and install the following package:

lm_sensors
gkrellm

Which sensors are present?

To detect which sensor is present we use the sensors-detect utility.

Open a terminal (konsole) and get administrator privileges with:

su

and start

sensors-detect

We now get this output:

....@....-pardus ~ $ su
Password:
....-pardus .... # sensors-detect
# sensors-detect revision 5249 (2008-05-11 22:56:25 +0200)

This program will help you determine which kernel modules you need
to load to use lm_sensors most effectively. It is generally safe
and recommended to accept the default answers to all questions,
unless you know what you're doing.

We can start with probing for (PCI) I2C or SMBus adapters.
Do you want to probe now? (YES/no):

We get a number of these questions and answer them with [Enter] (=YES) until we reach the end with something like this:

.
.
Intel Core family thermal sensor...                         No
Intel AMB FB-DIMM thermal sensor...                         No

Now follows a summary of the probes I have just done.
Just press ENTER to continue:

Driver `w83627hf' (should be inserted):
  Detects correctly:
  * ISA bus, address 0x290
    Chip `Winbond W83697HF/F/HG Super IO Sensors' (confidence: 9)

Do you want to generate /etc/sysconfig/lm_sensors? (yes/NO):
To load everything that is needed, add this to one of the system
initialization scripts (e.g. /etc/rc.d/rc.local):

#----cut here----
# Chip drivers
modprobe w83627hf
/usr/bin/sensors -s
#----cut here----

If you have some drivers built into your kernel, the list above will
contain too many modules. Skip the appropriate ones! You really
should try these commands right now to make sure everything is
working properly. Monitoring programs won't work until the needed
modules are loaded.

....-pardus .... #

This shows (IN THIS EXAMPLE) that chip `Winbond W83697HF' is present and that we need kernelmodule "w83627hf".

Auto load of kernel module

Add w83627hf (IN THIS EXAMPLE) to /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 with:

....-pardus .... # echo w83627hf>>/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6
....-pardus .... #

Close the terminal and restart your computer to load kernel module and lm_sensors.

Configuration of GKrellM

Start Pardus -> Programs -> System -> GKrellM

You can configure your monitors by right clicking on the top frame or on the various monitors of GKrellM or by hitting the F1 key with the mouse in the GKrellM window.

You can drag the GKrellM window to any position on your display.

In Builtins -> Sensors you can configure the display of your sensors.

(General configuration tip: General>Properties put a mark at 'Set sticky state' and 'Do not include on task bar')