Ubuntu Manpage: I8kmon - Monitor the cpu temperature and fan status on Dell laptops

NAME

       I8kmon - Monitor the cpu temperature and fan status on Dell laptops

SYNTAX

       i8kmon [<options>]

DESCRIPTION

The i8kmon daemon can be used to monitor the cpu temperature and fan status on Dell laptops. The program
can be run in background as daemon or under X as an applet which can be swallowed in the gnome panel.

By default the program monitors the cpu temperature but doesn't do any automatic controls of the fan
status accordingly to user-defined temperature thresholds because this may not be needed if your laptop
does already a good job with fans control. The automatic control can be enabled manually with the --auto
option.

The automatic fan control can also be turned on in the control popup menu which is invoked by clicking
with the left mouse button on the temperature label. The control menu has three items: Auto, which
controls the automatic fan control, Verbose, which prints status on stdout, and Suspend, which closes the
/proc/i8kfan file and suspends the daemon to allow unloading the kernel module.

The user interface reports the current cpu temperature in the top box and in the two lower buttons the
status of the fans. On systems wiht only one fan the interface shows only one fan button. If a button's
background becomes red it means that the corresponding fan has a rotation speed lower than the minimum
expected speed and is probably stuck. In this case proding it with a bent paper clip can often cause it
to become unstuck.

The fan buttons can also be used to manually control the fan speeds. Clicking on a fan button with the
left mouse button will cycle the selected fan between low speed, high speed and off. Clicking with the
middle button will set the fan to high speed and clicking with the right button will switch the fan off.
Note however that both the BIOS and the daemon have their own idea of what the fan speed should be and
can sometimes try to override the manual settings.

OPTIONS

       The program accepts the following command-line options:

       -a, --auto
              Monitor cpu temperature and fan status and control automatically the fans.

       -na, --noauto
              Monitor  cpu  temperature  and  fan  status  but don't control automatically the fans. This is the
              default setting.

       -d, --daemon
              Run the program in daemon mode, i.e. without the user interface.

       -nd, --nodaemon
              Don't run the program in daemon mode, i.e. open the user interface. This is the default setting.

       -nc, --nouserconfig
              Don't attempt to source the ~/.i8kmon configfile, only /etc/i8kmon.conf.

       -v, --verbose
              Report hardware status and program actions on stdout.

       -g, --geometry <geometry>
              Specifies the geometry of the applet window. Geometry should be 24x24, 36x36 or 48x48 to  fit  the
              size of the gnome panel.

       -t, --timeout <seconds>
              Specifies  the  interval  at which the daemon checks the hardware status. Useful values are in the
              range of 1-5 seconds. Default is 2 seconds.

       -u, --unit C|F
              Specifies the temperature display unit. Default is C (Celsius).   This  option  affects  only  the
              value shown in the applet. All other temperature values are always in Celsius.

CONFIGURATION

       The  program  has builtin defaults and temperature thresholds but users can specify their own settings in
       configuration files /etc/default/i8kmon and ~/.i8kmon.  The daemon defines 4 states  with  different  fan
       speeds ({0 0}, {1 0}, {1 1}, {2 2}) and for each state are defined the temperature thresholds which cause
       the  switching  to  a  higher  or  lower  state. Furthermore each state can have different thresholds for
       operation on ac power or battery.  For example the following configuration:

              set config(0) {{0 0}  "-"1  60  "-"1  65}
              set config(1) {{1 0}  50  70  55  75}
              set config(2) {{1 1}  60  80  65  85}
              set config(3) {{2 2}  70 128  75 128}

       defines state 0 with both fans off, high threshold of 60 degrees (65 on battery) and low threshold  "-"1,
       which  is  actually  never  reached  since  0 is the lowest state. When the high threshold is reached the
       program switches to state 1 (left low, right off) which has a high threshold of  70  degrees  and  a  low
       threshold of 50 degrees. If the temperature drops below 50 the program will switch back to state 0, if it
       rises  above  70 it will enter state 2, and so on.  For better operation the temperature ranges should be
       overlapping with an hysteresis of at least 10 degrees, i.e. 1={50 70},2={60  80}  is  better  than  1={50
       70},2={70  80}. It must be rembered that the low threshold of state 0 must be "-"1 and the high threshold
       of state 3 must be 128.

       If your laptop has only one fan you should specify a '-' instead of the fan speed of the missing fan, for
       example:

              set config(2) {{1 -}  60  80  65  85}

       This program can be used by normal users as Gnome panel applet or started as daemon by  an  init  script.
       Under   Debian   GNU/Linux   it   is   possible   to  start  the  daemon  automatically  by  creating  an
       /etc/default/i8kmon  configfile  containing   the   line   "set   config(daemon)   1".   Note   the   the
       /etc/default/i8kmon  configfile  is not installed by the i8kutils package because the program is designed
       to be run by normal users. If you want to use it as daemon you must create the config file  yourself.  In
       this  case, the --nouserconfig option can sometimes also help by limiting it to sourcing /etc/i8kmon.conf
       (and not ~/.i8kmon).

FILES

       /proc/i8k
       /etc/default/i8kmon
       /$HOME/.i8kmon

AUTHORS

       Massimo Dal Zotto <dz@debian.org>

COPYRIGHT

       i8kmon and all the i8kutils programs , scripts and other files are  distributed  under  the  GNU  General
       Public  License  (GPL).  On Debian GNU/Linux systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License
       can be found in `/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL'.

BUGS

       On some Linux distributions i8kmon exits with an error like this:

              can't find package Tk
                  while executing
              "package require Tk"

       This is not a bug of i8kmon. It means that Tcl/Tk files are not installed correctly on  your  system  and
       the Tk library can't be dynamically loaded from Tcl as it should be. In this case you can run i8kmon with
       the command:

              wish /usr/bin/i8kmon -- [options...]