The mystery of lm-sensors

Timothy Murphy tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
Mon Nov 27 13:23:15 UTC 2006


Andy Green wrote:

>> Does anyone understand the output of "sensors"
>> under the lm-sensors program?
> 
> If you read the docs for lm_sensors you can see that the interpretation
> it does on the raw reading from the temperature sensor is grossly
> different depending on the type on sensor, the motherboard, phase of
> moon and so on, and there is nothing to check you have the correct
> sensor approximation or to calibrate it.

I did read the documentation that comes with FC-6 lm-sensors.
But as you say, it is not much help.

> It's better to see if you can get the temperature from /proc/acpi, where
> the BIOS on the motherboard (AIUI) has done the conversion to
> centigrade.  At least the BIOS has a better chance to match what sensor
> is on the motherboard.

Unfortunately, /proc/acpi/thermal_zone is empty on this desktop computer
(Asus K8V-F Athlon 64)
even though I have compiled it into the kernel.
In fact that is true on all three of my desktops
(the other two being Sempron and PIII).
As far as I can see, this acpi entry is more or less restricted to laptops.

At least lm-sensors gives some response, even if it is incomprehensible ...



-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland




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