Introduction to lm-sensors
The lm-sensors package provides
userspace support for the hardware monitoring drivers in the Linux
kernel. This is useful for monitoring the temperature of the CPU
and adjusting the performance of some hardware (such as cooling
fans).
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Note
Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages
properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most
recent stable versions of the books.
Package Information
lm-sensors Dependencies
Required
Which-2.21
Optional
RRDtool
(required to build the sensord program) and dmidecode
(runtime)
Kernel
Configuration
The following configuration options attempt to cover the most
common hardware monitoring devices in a typical desktop or laptop
system. View the help of each (by pressing the H button with the option focused
in the make
menuconfig) to know if you need it. There are many
platform-specific hardware monitoring devices so it's impossible to
list the configuration for all of them here. You may investigate
the content of /sys/class/hwmon
within a “mainstream” distro running on the system to
know which drivers you need.
Power management and ACPI options --->
[*] ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) Support ---> [ACPI]
< /*/M> Battery [ACPI_BATTERY]
< /*/M> Thermal Zone [ACPI_THERMAL]
Device Drivers --->
NVME Support --->
< /*> NVM Express block device [BLK_DEV_NVME]
# Set [HWMON] to <*> (not <M>!) or it will not show up:
[ /*] NVMe hardware monitoring [NVME_HWMON]
<*/M> Hardware Monitoring support ---> [HWMON]
< /*/M> AMD Athlon64/FX or Opteron temperature sensor [SENSORS_K8TEMP]
< /*/M> AMD Family 10h+ temperature sensor [SENSORS_K10TEMP]
< /*/M> AMD Family 15h processor power [SENSORS_FAM15H_POWER]
< /*/M> Intel Core/Core2/Atom temperature sensor [SENSORS_CORETEMP]
Recompile your kernel and reboot into the new kernel.
Installation of lm-sensors
Install lm-sensors by running the
following commands:
make PREFIX=/usr \
BUILD_STATIC_LIB=0 \
MANDIR=/usr/share/man \
EXLDFLAGS=
This package does not come with a test suite.
Now, as the root user:
make PREFIX=/usr \
BUILD_STATIC_LIB=0 \
MANDIR=/usr/share/man install &&
install -v -m755 -d /usr/share/doc/lm-sensors-3-6-0 &&
cp -rv README INSTALL doc/* \
/usr/share/doc/lm-sensors-3-6-0
Command Explanations
BUILD_STATIC_LIB=0: This
parameter disables compiling and installing the static version of
libsensors.
EXLDFLAGS=: This parameter
disables hard coding library search paths (rpath) into the binary
executable files and shared libraries. This package does not need
rpath for an installation into the standard location, and rpath may
sometimes cause unwanted effects or even security issues.
PROG_EXTRA=sensord: This parameter
enables compiling sensord, a daemon that can
monitor your system at regular intervals. Compiling sensord requires RRDtool. Be sure to
install RRDtool in /usr by running
make prefix=/usr when
building it. Otherwise, lm-sensors will not find it easily.
Configuring lm-sensors
Config
File
/etc/sensors3.conf
Contents
Installed Programs:
fancontrol, isadump, isaset, pwmconfig,
sensors, sensors-conf-convert, sensors-detect, and optionally,
sensord
Installed Library:
libsensors.so
Installed Directories:
/etc/sensors.d, /usr/include/sensors and
/usr/share/doc/lm-sensors-3-6-0
Short Descriptions
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fancontrol
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is a shell script for use with lm-sensors. It reads its
configuration from a file (/etc/sensors3.conf by
default), then calculates fan speeds from temperatures
and sets the corresponding PWM outputs to the computed
values
|
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isadump
|
is a small helper program to examine registers visible
through the ISA bus. It is intended to probe any chip
that lives on the ISA bus working with an address
register and a data register (I2C-like access) or a flat
range (of up to 256 bytes)
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isaset
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is a small helper program to set registers visible
through the ISA bus
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pwmconfig
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tests the pulse width modulation (PWM) outputs of sensors
and configures fancontrol
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sensors
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prints the current readings of all sensor chips
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sensors-conf-convert
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is a Perl script to
convert lm-sensors
version 2 configuration files to work with version 3
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|
sensors-detect
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is a Perl script that
will walk you through the process of scanning your system
for various hardware monitoring chips (sensors) supported
by libsensors, or more
generally by the lm-sensors tool suite
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sensord
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(optional) is a daemon that can be used to periodically
log sensor readings
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libsensors.so
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contains the lm-sensors
API functions
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