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 stand-alone 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.

* configs

  This directory contains sample configurations of various boards,

  contributed by users of lm-sensors.

  Older sample configurations can be found on an old lm-sensors wiki

  archived here:

  http://web.archive.org/web/20150901092438/http://www.lm-sensors.org:80/wiki/Configurations

  Please contribute back a configuration of your board so other users with

  the same hardware won't need to recreate it again and again.

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 contains 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.

This package does not contain a nice graphical monitor. See

http://sensors-applet.sourceforge.net/

https://01.org/powertop/

https://wpitchoune.net/psensor/

https://amanusk.github.io/s-tui/

for such programs.

OTHER INFORMATION

-----------------

The lm_sensors website can be found at

https://hwmon.wiki.kernel.org/lm_sensors

The developers of this package can be reached using

* a mailing list lm-sensors <at> vger <dot> kernel <dot> org

  (you can get information on how to subscribe, unsubscribe, and the list

  of archives at http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html#lm-sensors;

  you do not need to be subscribed to post to the list)

* GitHub (see https://github.com/lm-sensors/lm-sensors)

Do not hesitate to contact 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 before you ask any questions! It's all under doc/.

The latest version of this package can always be found at:

https://github.com/lm-sensors/lm-sensors.

LICENSE

-------

The library (libsensors) is released under the GNU Lesser General Public

License (LGPL), as included in the file COPYING.LGPL. The rest of this

package may be distributed according to the GNU General Public License

(GPL), as included in the file COPYING.