[clug] Monitoring CPU temperature in Dell laptops

[David Collett]

If your laptop supports ACPI, you may be able to use that instead of
lm_sensors. Load the module 'thermal' and have a look around
in /proc/acpi/*

Dave

On Sun, 2005-05-08 at 11:19 +1000, Pearl Louis wrote:
> I  have a Dell Inspiron 8600.  Does any know of a way to monitor CPU
> temperature from Linux?  lm_sensors doesn't work because it can't
> detect the sensors (using sensors-detect).  I know there are sensors
> because in Windows you can monitor the CPU temperature using
> I8kfanGUI, an open-source (but alas Windows only!) tool someone wrote
> by reverse-engineering Dell diagnostic tests "because Dell was not
> willing to publish information on how to get control over the fans to
> prevent overheating. So this program uses undocumented Dell SMBIOS
> functions to detect the temperature sensors and to control the fans." 
> Which I guess explains why lm_sensors doesn't detect any
> sensors...Does anyone know of a similar tool for Linux?  According to
> the I8KfanGUI website, Dell laptops have an inbuilt temperature that
> the fans turn on automatically so I don't think it'll burn out on me,
> but it's pretty high (75-85 degrees).
> 
> Thanks!
> Pearl