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OVERVIEW OF THE LM-SENSORS PACKAGE
==================================
The lm-sensors package, version 3, provides user-space support for the
hardware monitoring drivers in Linux 2.6.5 and later. For older kernel
versions, you have to use lm-sensors version 2.
The directories within this package:
* doc
Documentation.
* etc
A sample configuration file for libsensors, and a script to convert
lm-sensors version 2 configuration files to work with version 3.
* lib
The user-space sensors support library code (libsensors).
* prog
Several supporting programs. The most important ones are:
- sensors-detect: A program for detecting installed hardware and
recommending specific modules to load.
- sensors: A console tool to report sensor readings and set new
sensor limits.
- sensord: A daemon to watch sensor values and log problems. It
includes RRD support.
INSTALLING LM-SENSORS
---------------------
See the INSTALL file.
HARDWARE SUPPORT
----------------
To find out what hardware you have, just run 'sensors-detect' as root.
Most modern mainboards incorporate some form of hardware monitoring chips.
These chips read things like chip temperatures, fan rotation speeds and
voltage levels. There are quite a few different chips which can be used by
mainboard builders for approximately the same results.
Laptops, on the other hand, rarely expose any hardware monitoring
chip. They often have some BIOS and/or ACPI magic to get the CPU
temperature value, but that's about it. For such laptops, the lm-sensors
package is of no use (sensors-detect will not find anything), and you have
to use acpi instead.
This package doesn't contain chip-specific knowledge. It will support all
the hardware monitoring chips your kernel has drivers for. In other words,
if you find out that you have unsupported hardware (e.g. sensors-detect
told you so) then it means that you need a more recent kernel, or you
even need to wait for a new kernel driver to be written. Updating the
lm-sensors package itself will not help.
LIBSENSORS
----------
The kernel drivers communicate their information through the /sys
interface. Because every motherboard is different, the drivers always
advert the measurements at their pins. This means that the values they
report are not always immediately relevant to you. They have to be
labelled properly, and sometimes they must be scaled to correspond to
real-world values.
libsensors is a (shared or static) library of access functions. It
offers a simple-to-use interface for applications to access the sensor
chip readings and configure them as you like. It has a configuration
file where you can put all the motherboard-specific labels and
conversion rules. That way, all applications do not need to duplicate
the effort and can simply link with libsensors and work out of the box.
APPLICATIONS
------------
This package does not contain a nice graphical monitor. Look at the file
doc/useful_addresses.html for pointers to such programs. It does contain
an example console program that reports all current sensors values. This
program is called 'sensors'. You can use it as a reference implementation
for more intricate programs. It also contains a daemon watching for
sensor values, logging alarms and feeding an RRD database with the sensor
measurements.
OTHER INFORMATION
-----------------
The developers of this package can be reached through a mailing-list
(see http://www.lm-sensors.org/wiki/AuthorsAndContributors). Do not hesitate
to mail us if you have questions, suggestions, problems, want to
contribute, or just want to report it works for you. But please try to
read the documentation and FAQ before you ask any questions! It's all
under doc/.
The latest version of this package can always be found at:
http://www.lm-sensors.org/wiki/Download. Pre-release versions can be
retrieved through anonymous SVN; see doc/svn for details.
This package may be distributed according to the GNU General Public
License (GPL), as included in the file COPYING.
Note that libsensors falls under the GPL, not the LGPL. In more human
language, that means it is FORBIDDEN to link any application to the
library, even to the shared version, if the application itself does not
fall under the GPL.
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