Psensor Frequently Asked Questions

The last version of this FAQ is available at http://wpitchoune.net/gitweb/?p=psensor.git;a=blob_plain;f=doc/faq.html;hb=HEAD.

1. No sensors or only cpu usage is displayed

Psensor is relying on few libraries or softwares for retrieving the information about the computer:

motherboard and CPUs sensors: the information is retrieved from the lm-sensors library, it requires that sensors-detect has been run and the kernel module correctly installed. sensors can be used for checking.
GPUs: it depends on which driver you are using:
- Opensource drivers (nouveau for Nvidia GPUs or radeon/ati for ATI GPUs) is used and support sensor monitoring for your GPU, the information is using lm-sensors, same steps than above.
- proprietary driver Nvidia: run nvidia-settings to check that it supports sensors monitoring.
- proprietary driver Catalyst/fglx: use aticonfig to check that it supports sensors monitoring. Important note: it requires that you are using a Psensor binary compiled with the ATI support.

For hard disk drives, psensor can use:

udisks2: added since 1.1.2 release. It is the default and recommended provider.
hddtemp: verify that it is correctly reporting temperature by using the command: sudo hddtemp /dev/sda. It is the default provider until 1.1.2 release.
atasmart library: before the 1.1.2 release it can be enabled by using the command line option --use-libatasmart.

If the underlying software is reporting sensors which are not displayed by Psensor, it is probably a bug in Psensor, so please report it. Otherwise, the issue is on the underlying software itself and you should contact the corresponding development team or refer to its documentation.

Since the release 1.1.2, the providers can be enabled or disabled directly from the user interface (Preferences>Provider).

2. How to monitor an ATI card using the Catalyst driver?

For monitoring ATI card using the proprietary Catalyst driver, Psensor must be compiled with a proprietary library which is not packaged in any Linux distribution.

Unfortunely, due to the license of this library, I cannot provide a compiled version of Psensor, even in a Ubuntu PPA or Ubuntu/Debian standard repositories. You have to compile Psensor sensor. You can find the instructions in the section ATI/AMD GPU Support of the README file available in the Psensor source archives.

If you are using the ATI OpenSource driver, it is not needed to compile Psensor with this proprietary library.

3. The reported temperature is obviously wrong

If the reported temperature is obviously wrong (never change, lower than the ambiant temperature, negative, higher than the sun temperature, etc):

most of the time it is not a bug in Psensor nor in the underlying monitoring libraries:
- if the temperature does not change, it might be due to an existent sensor not wired by the hardware manufacturer.
- the goal of the sensor is to allow the system to detect critical temperature and NOT to report an exact temperature. Most sensors report a relative temperature. The more it differs from the critical temperature , the more it is wrong.
It is only a bug in Psensor if the underlying libraries report a different information than Psensor (use the appropriate command or software: sensors, aticonfig or hddtemp to check). In this case, please report a bug.

4. What is the sensors XXXX?

Since Psensor v0.7.0.4, open the preferences of the sensor (click on its name in the main window and select the menu item Preferences), and look at the Chip field.

For older Psensor releases, look at the Id field, if the string is starting with:

lmsensor coretemp: Intel CPU.
lmsensor k10temp, lmsensor k8temp, lmsensor fam15h_power: AMD CPU.
nvidia or lmsensor nouveau: NVIDIA GPU.
hdd: hard disk drive.
amd: AMD GPU.
lmsensor C B: C is the name of the chip, B the name of the adapter.

For more information about lmsensor devices, see http://lm-sensors.org/wiki/Devices.

5. How to report a bug?

Please use https://bugs.launchpad.net/psensor/+filebug to report bugs even if it can only reproduced with a non-Ubuntu distribution or a release not available in the standard Ubuntu repositories.

You can also use https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/psensor/+filebug if the bug can be reproduced with a package from the standard Ubuntu repositories.

If you don’t want to use the launchpad, you can send the report by email to:

If the bug is concerning Debian or Ubuntu derivatives distribution, please add in its description the output of the command: apt-cache policy psensor.

If it is related to the Psensor source compilation, please add the full output of the configure command.

6. How to send ideas, questions or comments?

Check the FAQ or the TODO pages.

If you don’t find the information, you can send an email to the public mailing-list psensor-users@googlegroups.com or directly to me: jeanfi@gmail.com.

7. How to contribute?

See http://wpitchoune.net/blog/psensor/how-to-contribute/.

8. How to install Psensor on Ubuntu?

Psensor is in the official repository, search psensor in the software center and install it. More information at: http://wpitchoune.net/blog/psensor/ubuntu-integration/.

9. How to install Psensor on Debian?

Psensor is in the official repository since Debian 7.0. You can get the last packaged version from the sid repository. More information at: http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/psensor.html.

10. What is the difference between the 3 Ubuntu PPAs?

ppa:jfi/ppa: last stable version.
ppa:jfi/psensor-unstable: last development version, no major bug is expected.
ppa:jfi/psensor-daily-trunk: build each day directly from the GIT source repository. It may contain major bugs or incomplete features. Useful for contributors or testing whether a bug is fixed.

11. How to install Psensor on ArchLinux?

See http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=37807.

12. How to install Psensor on my Linux distribution?

Psensor packages are available in the standard repositories of Ubuntu (since Oneiric) and Debian (since v7) distributions.

For other distributions, you will find the compilation and installation instructions in the section Installation from source archive in the README file of the source archive. Psensor should compile in any modern distribution.

13. How to log sensors temperatures?

The best way is probably to use sensord or a custom script based on the output of the different commands like sensors.

Anyway, as I received several requests about such feature, since the 0.7.0.4 release it is implemented in both psensor ( menu preferences > sensors > enable log of measures) and psensor-server (--sensor-log-file option).

14. No graphs are displayed, but the table of the main window is displaying sensors

In the sensors table of the main window, switch on the checkbox of the last column (named Enabled or Graph depending on the Psensor version).

15. Launch Psensor automaticaly on session startup

Since the version 1.0.1, Psensor is no more started automaticaly by default.

Open the Preferences window, select the Startup tab and switch on the option Launch on session startup.

This feature is requiring that the Desktop Environment supports the XDG specification.

How to monitor the temperature of a disk with hddtemp?

Until the release 1.1.2, Psensor is using +hddtemp+ by default to
retrieve the temperature of the disks.

If +hddtemp+ is installed but no disk temperature is reported, check
that the daemon is running by using for example the command +ps
-eaf|grep hddtemp+.
It should output something like:

root 1433 1 0 May28 ? 00:00:21 /usr/sbin/hddtemp -d -l 127.0.0.1 -p 7634 -s | /dev/sdb

Depending on the Linux distribution, the installation of the +hddtemp+
package does not enable the hddtemp daemon automaticaly.

In this case, edit the file +/etc/default/hddtemp+ and set
+RUN_DAEMON+ to +"true"+ like in the following example:

# hddtemp network daemon switch. If set to true, hddtemp will listen # for incoming connections. RUN_DAEMON="true"

For Debian/Ubuntu, you can use

dpkg-reconfigure hddtemp

and reply +yes+ when asked whether hddtemp daemon must be
run during the startup.

[[S_SimilarSoft]]
Is there any other similar softwares?

Here is a list of few well-known sensors monitoring softwares:

for X11: http://freecode.com/projects/xsensors
for GNOME2: http://sensors-applet.sourceforge.net/
for Ubuntu Unity: https://launchpad.net/indicator-sensors
more general, but can be configured to display sensors information: http://conky.sourceforge.net/

16. Is it possible to hide sensors in the main window?

Before v1.1.1, the sensors retrieved from the lm-sensor library can be ignored directly in the lm-sensor configuration. See the manpage of sensors.conf(5).

Since v1.1.1, it is possible to hide a sensor, uncheck the setting Display sensor in the list of sensors in the sensor preferences.