How to know what tempX mean in sensors output

sensors

The temp[[:digit:]] things are confusing. Can the output of sensors be more human readable?

$ sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +59.0°C  (crit = +127.0°C)
temp2:        +60.0°C  (crit = +100.0°C)

thinkpad-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
fan1:        2990 RPM
temp1:        +59.0°C  
temp2:        +53.0°C  
temp3:        +41.0°C  
temp4:        +76.0°C  
temp5:        +36.0°C  
temp6:            N/A  
temp7:        +33.0°C  
temp8:            N/A  
temp9:        +43.0°C  
temp10:       +51.0°C  
temp11:       +49.0°C  
temp12:           N/A  
temp13:           N/A  
temp14:           N/A  
temp15:           N/A  
temp16:           N/A

Now it is like the following. Do they indicate my laptop is healthy? Do I have to worry about that? The reported temperatures are when I am opening 100 tabs in chrome browser now. They are achieved when I use a cooler and scale the cpu frequency to the lowest 0.8GHz. WIhtout a cooler, the highest temperature will be over 80 celcius. If further without cpu freq scaling, the highest can be 90 and 100 celcius.

$ sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
CPU_0:        +57.0°C  (crit = +127.0°C)
CPU_1:        +56.0°C  (crit = +100.0°C)

thinkpad-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Fan:                                                   2939 RPM
CPU neighbourhood (also via ACPI THM0):                 +57.0°C  
Ultrabay:                                               +51.0°C  
Express card:                                           +38.0°C  
ATI graphics module:                                    +73.0°C  
Main battery (always around 50°C):                     +36.0°C  
n/a (probably ultrabay battery):                            N/A  
Main Battery (fits about the value reported by smapi):  +33.0°C  
n/a (probably ultrabay battery):                            N/A  
Hard disc:                                              +40.0°C  
Intel graphics module:                                  +48.0°C  
Heatsink?:                                              +46.0°C  
n/a:                                                        N/A  
n/a:                                                        N/A  
n/a:                                                        N/A  
n/a:                                                        N/A  
n/a:                                                        N/A

Best Answer

It seems you could do this by editing the /etc/sensors3.conf file as discussed here.

To have sensors use describing labels like above, you can add the following section to /etc/sensors3.conf, if not already there. Use the sensor location findings below.

You could add the details as below.

chip "thinkpad-isa-0000"   
label fan1   "Fan"   
label temp1  "CPU"  
label temp2  "HDAPS"   
label temp3  "PCMCIA"   
label temp4  "GPU"  
label temp5  "System battery (front left, charging circuit)"   
label temp7  "System battery (rear right)"   
label temp9  "Bus between Northbridge and DRAM; Ethernet chip"   
label temp10 "Southbridge, WLAN and clock generator"   
label temp11 "Power circuitry"

You could probably get information about your model from here.

Related Solutions

How to add sensors and cooling devices to thermal-conf.xml

I'm new on this stuff as well ( just installed ) anyway I'll try to share what I have understood.

In short

Thermald can control cooling via active or passive cooling devices as presented in sysfs (path /sys/class/thermal/).
If you know you have any other devices that the ones listed in /sys/class/thermal/, you can add manually:

The best cooling method may not be in the thermal sysfs. In this case
thermal-conf.xml  can  be  used  to  bind a zone to an external cooling
device.

-> in the config you can specify a path to a device: <Path></Path>

Debug and other info

At the moment the best resources looks to be:

1 man thermald
2.man thermal-conf.xml link
3. Ubuntu Wiki: Thermald

Ubuntu documentation provides and example /etc/thermald/thermal-conf.xml that you may want use instead of the default config.

To understand what is going on the first step is to launch the daemon in debug mode:

sudo service thermald stop
sudo thermald --no-daemon --loglevel=debug

On my Ubuntu (using the wiki config file) I can see the daemon automatically adds the sensors from sysfs.
Try to check the first lines of the debug log, you should see something like this:

thd_read_default_thermal_sensors 
sensor_update: type acpitz
sensor_update: type acpitz
sensor_update: type pkg-temp-0
thd_read_default_thermal_sensors loaded 3 sensors

In accord with your sensor -u print I cannot see any active cooling device ( fan ):

It looks that sensor was not able to find any software controllable fan, so I'm not sure what other methods you can add ...

Colorize output from sensors

Usage: sensors | ./color_sensors.awk

Usage with watch: watch -c 'sensors | ./color_sensors.awk'

#!/usr/bin/awk -f

BEGIN {
    DEFAULT_COLOR = "\033[;m";
    RED           = "\033[1;31m";
    MAGENTA       = "\033[1;35m";

    # CPU_thresholds
    cpu_high = 60; 
    cpu_middle = 50; 

    # GPU_thresholds
    gpu_high = 80; 
    gpu_middle = 70; 
}

function colorize(temp, mid_trsh, high_trsh) {
    new_color = "";  

    temp_number = temp;
    gsub("[^0-9]","",temp_number);
    gsub(".$","",temp_number);

    if(temp_number >= high_trsh) 
        new_color = RED;
    else if (temp_number >= mid_trsh) 
        new_color = MAGENTA;

    return new_color temp DEFAULT_COLOR;
}

/Core/          { $3 = "\t" colorize($3, cpu_middle, cpu_high); }
/Physical id/   { $4 = "\t" colorize($4, cpu_middle, cpu_high); }
# Multiple spaces added for alignment here - "\t      ".
/temp1/         { $2 = "\t      " colorize($2, gpu_middle, gpu_high) " "; }
                { print; }

Result:

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to add sensors and cooling devices to thermal-conf.xml

Colorize output from sensors

Related Question