For server machine, you might want to monitor the status of your machine closely. What do you want to know? Yes, CPU, fan, and harddisk are the main components. Fortunately, Linux has strong support for hardware sensors. All sensors are supported by lm-sensors. The original project is to provide support for lm78 but now it aims to support wide range of sensor chips. Ubuntu provides lm-sensors as a ready-to-use package. You can install it in just 3 steps.

1. Install the package
   

   apt-get install lm-sensors

2. Start detection. You may accept all default choices
   

   sensors-detect

3. Modify /etc/modules by the suggested configuration

The next step is to run modprobe according to the detected configuration as you added in /etc/modules. Now you should be able to run sensors to obtain the status of your mainboard. For example, below is the results on Asus P4P800-E Deluxe.

w83627thf-isa-0290
Adapter: ISA adapter
VCore:     +1.43 V  (min =  +0.70 V, max =  +1.87 V)              
+12V:     +12.04 V  (min = +11.86 V, max =  +4.13 V)       ALARM  
+3.3V:     +3.36 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +0.64 V)       ALARM  
+5V:       +5.01 V  (min =  +0.91 V, max =  +0.03 V)       ALARM  
-12V:     -14.91 V  (min = -14.91 V, max = -14.91 V)       ALARM  
V5SB:      +5.08 V  (min =  +3.04 V, max =  +4.30 V)       ALARM  
VBat:      +0.38 V  (min =  +1.54 V, max =  +1.73 V)       ALARM  
fan1:     5818 RPM  (min = 18750 RPM, div = 2)              ALARM  
CPU Fan:  5769 RPM  (min =   -1 RPM, div = 2)              ALARM  
fan3:     4141 RPM  (min = 4591 RPM, div = 2)              ALARM  
M/B Temp:    +49 C  (high =    +4 C, hyst =    +0 C)   sensor = thermistor   ALARM   
CPU Temp:  +51.0 C  (high =   +80 C, hyst =   +75 C)   sensor = thermistor           
temp3:     -48.0 C  (high =   +80 C, hyst =   +75 C)   sensor = thermistor           
vid:      +1.350 V  (VRM Version 9.0)
alarms:   
beep_enable:
          Sound alarm enabled

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