Posted by yolau

As the summer is starting to show its heat waives (at least here) I thought that an article on how to monitor your server’s CPU temperature is appropriate. In a modern Data Center heat should not be a problem but you never know…

When you should start worrying about your CPU temperature?
When the first signs are random reboots or hangs of your server. If you see something like that it is a good idea to check your server’s temperature.

How to monitor the temperature?
Linux provides a nice and useful app to monitor your CPU temperature called lm_sensors.

Requirements
lm_sensors requires a kernel 2.6.17 or higher. If you are running an older kernel you will have to upgrade before you install lm_sensors

Installation is simple:

1. Install the package via your package manager (for exemple yum)

yum install lm_sensors

2. Run the sensors detector

sensors-detect

Fallow the on screen instructions.
This will instruct you to add to /etc/modprobe.conf something like :

#—-cut here—-
# I2C module options
alias char-major-89 i2c-dev
#—-cut here—-

3. Start the lm_sensors service

service lm_sensors start

4. Now to get the sensor data

sensors

This will list all available sensors and provide the data from them.

Please note that if you want to use lm_sensors in a core2duo system you will need kernel 2.6.21 or newer.

Hope it helps!
If you have any questions just let me know.

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