Hardware Monitoring under Ubuntu 7.10

Hardware Monitoring is not enabled by default in Ubuntu 7.10. It is still not so easy to setup all in the right way. My goal was to control the speed of my fans and display some temperatures. I hope this little tutorial helps you.

I start with a newly installed Desktop Ubuntu 7.10 with Gnome Desktop in mind.

Basic Steps

1. Install lm-sensors
2. Configure lm-sensors
3. Install sensors-applet
4. Place the Gnome Sensors Applet into a panel and choose your temps to display
5. Configure your fans

Install lm-sensors

This is easy as always. Simply type the following into a terminal. You will be asked for your own password, because installation requires root access.

1. sudo apt-get install lm-sensors

Configure lm-sensors

Please run:

1. sudo sensors-detect

You will be asked some questions. Answer all with “yes”. At the end you will get a listing of kernel modules (drivers) to load for your hardware configuration. My system is an ASUS P5B Deluxe with a Core 2 Duo Processor. The output looks so:

1. To make the sensors modules behave correctly, add these lines to
2. /etc/modules:
3. #----cut here----
4. # I2C adapter drivers
5. # modprobe unknown adapter NVIDIA i2c adapter
6. # modprobe unknown adapter NVIDIA i2c adapter
7. # modprobe unknown adapter NVIDIA i2c adapter
8. # modprobe unknown adapter ISA main adapter
9. # Chip drivers
10. lm90
11. w83627ehf
12. coretemp
13. #----cut here----

Now you can let the script insert this configuration into the /etc/modules. It works without any problems. Now its safest to reboot but you can avoid the reboot if you are familiar with module loading.

Once you are back, you should do a quick check if all is running properly by running

1. sensors

in the terminal. On my system it looks so:

1. w83627dhg-isa-0290
2. Adapter: ISA adapter
3. VCore: +1.57 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +1.74 V)
4. in1: +12.14 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM
5. AVCC: +3.33 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +2.58 V) ALARM
6. 3VCC: +3.33 V (min = +0.51 V, max = +1.28 V) ALARM
7. in4: +1.34 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.03 V) ALARM
8. in5: +1.59 V (min = +0.13 V, max = +1.45 V) ALARM
9. in6: +4.15 V (min = +2.25 V, max = +0.03 V) ALARM
10. VSB: +3.31 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.19 V) ALARM
11. VBAT: +1.02 V (min = +1.33 V, max = +2.37 V) ALARM
12. Case Fan: 0 RPM (min = 10546 RPM, div = 128) ALARM
13. CPU Fan: 0 RPM (min = 104 RPM, div = 128) ALARM
14. Aux Fan: 1222 RPM (min = 42187 RPM, div = 8) ALARM
15. fan4: 0 RPM (min = 0 RPM, div = 128) ALARM
16. fan5: 2860 RPM (min = 3497 RPM, div = 2) ALARM
17. Sys Temp: +37°C (high = +2°C, hyst = +68°C)
18. CPU Temp: +31.5°C (high = +80.0°C, hyst = +75.0°C)
19. AUX Temp: +127.0°C (high = +80.0°C, hyst = +75.0°C) ALARM
20. coretemp-isa-0000
21. Adapter: ISA adapter
22. Core 0: +29°C (high = +85°C)
23. coretemp-isa-0001
24. Adapter: ISA adapter
25. Core 1: +30°C (high = +85°C)

If you see some reasonable output, your lm-sensors configuration will work properly. Now we can use some cool GUI tool to display these values.

Install sensors-applet

The package sensors-applet provides a usual Gnome desktop applet. I have chosen this because it integrates very well with the Gnome desktop. It looks an behaves just right. To install it type in the usual:

1. sudo apt-get install sensors-applet

Place the Gnome Sensors Applet into a panel and choose your temps to display

To place the sensors applet into your top panel, right click on it and choose Add to Panel....

Than you will see the Add to Panel Dialog. To get fast access to the Sensors Applet type in “sensors”.

Than drag&drop the Hardware Sensors Monitor onto you top panel. You will see some temperature sensors by default.

After this you are free to configure the applet. Do this by right clicking an chose Preferences. I choose to display only the System and the two Core temps.

Configure your Fans

Normally you would run pwmconfig and use than fancontrol but on my system it does not work. So I can’t write anything about it. I will continue writing if I solved this problem.