1 Psensor Frequently Asked Questions
2 ==================================
5 No sensors or only cpu usage is displayed
6 -----------------------------------------
8 Psensor is relying on few libraries or softwares for retrieving the information about the computer:
10 - motherboard and CPUs sensors: the information is retrieved
11 from the lm-sensors library, it requires that
12 ‘sensors-detect’ has been run and the kernel module
13 correctly installed. ‘sensors’ can be used for checking.
15 - GPUs: it depends on which driver you are using:
17 * Opensource drivers (nouveau for Nvidia GPUs or
18 radeon/ati for ATI GPUs) is used and support sensor
19 monitoring for your GPU, the information is using
20 lm-sensors, same steps than above.
22 * proprietary driver Nvidia: run ‘nvidia-settings’ to
23 check that it supports sensors monitoring.
25 * proprietary driver Catalyst/fglx: use ‘aticonfig’ to
26 check that it supports sensors monitoring. Important
27 note: it requires that you are using a Psensor
28 binary compiled with the ATI support.
30 - HDDs: it uses the hddtemp daemon. Verifies that it is
31 correctly reporting temperature by using the ‘sudo hddtemp
32 /dev/sd?’ command. If hddtemp does not support your disk,
33 you may want to try using the libatasmart support instead
34 (option –use-libatasmart option).
36 If the underlying software is reporting sensors which are not
37 displayed by Psensor, it is probably a bug in Psensor, so please
38 report it. Otherwise, the issue is on the underlying software itself
39 and you should contact the corresponding development team or refer to
43 How to monitor an ATI card using the Catalyst driver?
44 -----------------------------------------------------
46 For monitoring ATI card using the proprietary Catalyst driver, Psensor
47 must be compiled with a proprietary library which is not packaged in
48 any Linux distribution.
50 Unfortunely, due to the license of this library, I cannot provide a
51 compiled version of Psensor, even in a Ubuntu PPA or Ubuntu/Debian
52 standard repositories. You have to compile Psensor sensor. You can
53 find the instructions in the section “ATI/AMD GPU Support” of the
54 README file available in the Psensor source archives.
56 If you are using the ATI OpenSource driver, it is not needed to
57 compile Psensor with this proprietary library.
59 [[S_WrongTemperature]]
60 The reported temperature is obviously wrong
61 -------------------------------------------
63 If the reported temperature is obviously wrong (never change, lower
64 than the ambiant temperature, negative, higher than the sun
67 - most of the time it is not a bug in Psensor nor in the
68 underlying monitoring libraries:
70 * if the temperature does not change, it might be due
71 to an existent sensor not wired by the hardware
74 * the goal of the sensor is to allow the system to
75 detect critical temperature and NOT to report an
76 exact temperature. Most sensors report a relative
77 temperature. The more it differs from the critical
78 temperature , the more it is wrong.
80 - It is only a bug in Psensor if the underlying libraries
81 report a different information than Psensor (use the
82 appropriate command or software: ‘sensors’, ‘aticonfig’ or
83 ‘hddtemp’ to check). In this case, please report a bug.
86 What is the sensors XXXX?
87 -------------------------
89 Since Psensor v0.7.0.4, open the preferences of the sensor (click on
90 its name in the main window and select the menu item Preferences), and
91 look at the Chip field.
93 For older Psensor releases, look at the Id field, if the string is
96 - ‘lmsensor coretemp’: Intel CPU.
97 - ‘lmsensor k10temp’,'lmsensor k8temp’,'lmsensor fam15h_power’: AMD CPU.
98 - ‘nvidia’ or ‘lmsensor nouveau’: NVIDIA GPU.
99 - ‘hdd’: hard disk drive.
101 - ‘lmsensor C B’: C is the name of the chip, B the name of the adapter.
103 For more information about lmsensor devices, see
104 http://lm-sensors.org/wiki/Devices.
110 Please use https://bugs.launchpad.net/psensor/+filebug to report bugs
111 even if it can only reproduced with a non-Ubuntu distribution or a
112 release not available in the standard Ubuntu repositories.
115 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/psensor/+filebug if the bug
116 can be reproduced with a package from the standard Ubuntu
119 If you don’t want to use the launchpad, you can send me the report by
120 email to jeanfi@gmail.com.
122 If the bug is concerning Debian or Ubuntu derivatives distribution,
123 please add in its description the output of the command ‘apt-cache
126 If it is related to the Psensor source compilation, please add the
127 full output of the ‘configure’ command.
130 How to send ideas, questions or comments?
131 -----------------------------------------
133 Check the FAQ or the TODO pages.
135 If you don’t find the information, I am always happy to help, you can
138 - by email: (jeanfi@gmail.com), please add “[psensor]” in the
139 subject, I speak English and French.
141 - or IRC: I am on the #psensor channel of the irc.freenode.net
142 server. My nickname is “jfi”. Even if I am most of the time
143 connected, I may not be in front of the computer or
144 available, be patient!
150 See http://wpitchoune.net/blog/psensor/how-to-contribute/.
153 How to install Psensor on Ubuntu?
154 ---------------------------------
156 Psensor is in the official repository, search “psensor” in the software center and install it. More information at: http://wpitchoune.net/blog/psensor/ubuntu-integration/.
159 How to install Psensor on Debian?
160 ---------------------------------
162 Psensor will be in the official repository since Debian 7.0. You can get the last packaged version from the sid repository. More information at: http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/psensor.html.
165 What is the difference between the 3 Ubuntu PPAs?
166 -------------------------------------------------
168 - ppa:jfi/ppa: last stable version.
170 - ppa:jfi/psensor-unstable: last development version, no major
173 - ppa:jfi/psensor-daily-trunk: build each day directly from
174 the SVN source repository. It may contain major bugs or
175 incomplete features. Useful for contributors or testing
176 whether a bug is fixed.
178 [[S_ArchLinuxInstall]]
179 How to install Psensor on ArchLinux?
180 ------------------------------------
182 See http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=37807.
185 How to install Psensor on my Linux distribution?
186 ------------------------------------------------
188 Psensor packages are available in the standard repositories of Ubuntu
189 (since Oneiric) and Debian (since v7) distributions.
191 For other distributions, you will find the compilation and
192 installation instructions in the section ‘Installation from source
193 archive’ in the README file of the source archive. Psensor should
194 compile in any modern distribution.
197 How to log sensors temperatures?
198 --------------------------------
200 The best way is probably to use sensord or a custom script based on
201 the output of the different commands like sensors.
203 Anyway, as I received several requests about such feature, since the
204 0.7.0.4 release it is implemented in both psensor ( menu preferences >
205 sensors > enable log of measures) and psensor-server (–sensor-log-file
208 [[S_NO_GRAPH_DISPLAYED]]
210 No graphs are displayed, but the table of the main window is displaying sensors
211 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
213 In the sensors table of the main window, switch on the checkbox of the last
214 column (named "Enabled" or "Graph" depending on the Psensor version).
217 Is there any other similar softwares?
218 -------------------------------------
220 Here is a list of few well-known sensors monitoring softwares:
222 - for X11: http://freecode.com/projects/xsensors
224 - for GNOME2: http://sensors-applet.sourceforge.net/
226 - for Ubuntu Unity: https://launchpad.net/indicator-sensors
228 - more general, but can be configured to display sensors
229 information: http://conky.sourceforge.net/