Check your CPU Temperature in Linux

lm_sensors (Linux-monitoring sensors), is a free open source tool for Linux that provides tools and drivers for monitoring temperatures, voltage, humidity, and fans. It can also detect chassis intrusions. In this article we will install it and monitor CPU temperature using different commands.

1- Install EPEL Release if CentOS or RHEL

dnf install -y epel-release

2- Install Linux Monitoring Sensors

Install lm sensor on RHEL 8 and CentOS 8 and Fedora

dnf install -y lm_sensors

Install lm sensor on RHEL 7 and CentOS 7

yum install -y lm_sensors

If you are using Debian or Ubuntu use following command

sudo apt-get install lm-sensors

3- Sensor Configuration

Now, we need to make some configuration using below command after lm sensor installation. So if you want to go with default configuration simply hit enter key step by step.

sensors-detect

You will see similar steps during configuration.

[root@osradar ~]# sensors-detect
 sensors-detect revision 3.4.0-8 (2016-06-01)
 System: Hewlett-Packard HP Compaq dc7900 Small Form Factor
 Board: Hewlett-Packard 3031h
 Kernel: 3.10.0-957.27.2.el7.x86_64 x86_64
 Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz (6/23/10)
 This program will help you determine which kernel modules you need
 to load to use lm_sensors most effectively. It is generally safe
 and recommended to accept the default answers to all questions,
 unless you know what you're doing.
 Some south bridges, CPUs or memory controllers contain embedded sensors.
 Do you want to scan for them? This is totally safe. (YES/no):
 Silicon Integrated Systems SIS5595…                       No
 VIA VT82C686 Integrated Sensors…                          No
 VIA VT8231 Integrated Sensors…                            No
 AMD K8 thermal sensors…                                   No
 AMD Family 10h thermal sensors…                           No
 AMD Family 11h thermal sensors…                           No
 AMD Family 12h and 14h thermal sensors…                   No
 AMD Family 15h thermal sensors…                           No
 AMD Family 16h thermal sensors…                           No
 AMD Family 17h thermal sensors…                           No
 AMD Family 15h power sensors…                             No
 AMD Family 16h power sensors…                             No
 Intel digital thermal sensor…                             Success!

     (driver `coretemp')
 Intel AMB FB-DIMM thermal sensor…                         No
 Intel 5500/5520/X58 thermal sensor…                       No
 VIA C7 thermal sensor…                                    No
 VIA Nano thermal sensor…                                  No
 Some Super I/O chips contain embedded sensors. We have to write to
 standard I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe.
 Do you want to scan for Super I/O sensors? (YES/no):
 Probing for Super-I/O at 0x2e/0x2f
 Trying family National Semiconductor/ITE'...               Yes Found unknown chip with ID 0x1911 Probing for Super-I/O at 0x4e/0x4f Trying familyNational Semiconductor/ITE'…               No
 Trying family `SMSC'…                                     Yes
 Found unknown chip with ID 0x0b00
 Some systems (mainly servers) implement IPMI, a set of common interfaces
 through which system health data may be retrieved, amongst other things.
 We first try to get the information from SMBIOS. If we don't find it
 there, we have to read from arbitrary I/O ports to probe for such
 interfaces. This is normally safe. Do you want to scan for IPMI
 interfaces? (YES/no):
 Probing for IPMI BMC KCS' at 0xca0...                      No Probing forIPMI BMC SMIC' at 0xca8…                     No
 Some hardware monitoring chips are accessible through the ISA I/O ports.
 We have to write to arbitrary I/O ports to probe them. This is usually
 safe though. Yes, you do have ISA I/O ports even if you do not have any
 ISA slots! Do you want to scan the ISA I/O ports? (YES/no):
 Probing for National Semiconductor LM78' at 0x290...       No Probing forNational Semiconductor LM79' at 0x290…       No
 Probing for Winbond W83781D' at 0x290...                   No Probing forWinbond W83782D' at 0x290…                   No
 Lastly, we can probe the I2C/SMBus adapters for connected hardware
 monitoring devices. This is the most risky part, and while it works
 reasonably well on most systems, it has been reported to cause trouble
 on some systems.

 Do you want to probe the I2C/SMBus adapters now? (YES/no):
 Sorry, no supported PCI bus adapters found.
 Module i2c-dev loaded successfully.
 Next adapter: i915 gmbus ssc (i2c-0)
 Do you want to scan it? (yes/NO/selectively):
 Next adapter: i915 gmbus vga (i2c-1)
 Do you want to scan it? (yes/NO/selectively):
 Next adapter: i915 gmbus panel (i2c-2)
 Do you want to scan it? (yes/NO/selectively):
 Next adapter: i915 gmbus dpc (i2c-3)
 Do you want to scan it? (yes/NO/selectively):
 Next adapter: i915 gmbus dpb (i2c-4)
 Do you want to scan it? (yes/NO/selectively):
 Next adapter: i915 gmbus dpd (i2c-5)
 Do you want to scan it? (yes/NO/selectively):
 Now follows a summary of the probes I have just done.

 Just press ENTER to continue:
 Driver `coretemp':
 Chip `Intel digital thermal sensor' (confidence: 9) 
 Do you want to overwrite /etc/sysconfig/lm_sensors? (YES/no):
 Unloading i2c-dev… OK
 [root@osradar ~]#

So, you will see similar screen upon successful configuration.

4- See CPU Temperature

Finally issue following command to see CPU temperature,

sensors

So, you can see in above image the command “sensors” is showing number of CPU cores its current temperature. But in brackets its is also showing high and critical temperatures in degree centigrade.

See temperature on Runtime

watch sensors

Check temperature in Fahrenheit

Then, what if you wanna see it in Fahrenheit, if you want to do so simply run below command.

sensors -f

That’s it.