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Linux Sensors (lm-sensors)

Plugin: python.d.plugin Module: sensors

Overview​

Examine Linux Sensors metrics with Netdata for insights into hardware health and performance.

Enhance your system's reliability with real-time hardware health insights.

Reads system sensors information (temperature, voltage, electric current, power, etc.) via lm-sensors.

This collector is supported on all platforms.

This collector supports collecting metrics from multiple instances of this integration, including remote instances.

Default Behavior​

Auto-Detection​

The following type of sensors are auto-detected:

  • temperature - fan - voltage - current - power - energy - humidity

Limits​

The default configuration for this integration does not impose any limits on data collection.

Performance Impact​

The default configuration for this integration is not expected to impose a significant performance impact on the system.

Metrics​

Metrics grouped by scope.

The scope defines the instance that the metric belongs to. An instance is uniquely identified by a set of labels.

Per chip​

Metrics related to chips. Each chip provides a set of the following metrics, each having the chip name in the metric name as reported by sensors -u.

This scope has no labels.

Metrics:

MetricDimensionsUnit
sensors.temperaturea dimension per sensorCelsius
sensors.voltagea dimension per sensorVolts
sensors.currenta dimension per sensorAmpere
sensors.powera dimension per sensorWatt
sensors.fana dimension per sensorRotations/min
sensors.energya dimension per sensorJoule
sensors.humiditya dimension per sensorPercent

Alerts​

There are no alerts configured by default for this integration.

Setup​

Prerequisites​

No action required.

Configuration​

File​

The configuration file name for this integration is python.d/sensors.conf.

You can edit the configuration file using the edit-config script from the Netdata config directory.

cd /etc/netdata 2>/dev/null || cd /opt/netdata/etc/netdata
sudo ./edit-config python.d/sensors.conf

Options​

There are 2 sections:

  • Global variables
  • One or more JOBS that can define multiple different instances to monitor.

The following options can be defined globally: priority, penalty, autodetection_retry, update_every, but can also be defined per JOB to override the global values.

Additionally, the following collapsed table contains all the options that can be configured inside a JOB definition.

Every configuration JOB starts with a job_name value which will appear in the dashboard, unless a name parameter is specified.

Config options
NameDescriptionDefaultRequired
typesThe types of sensors to collect.temperature, fan, voltage, current, power, energy, humidityyes
update_everySets the default data collection frequency.1no
priorityControls the order of charts at the netdata dashboard.60000no
autodetection_retrySets the job re-check interval in seconds.0no
penaltyIndicates whether to apply penalty to update_every in case of failures.yesno

Examples​

Default​

Default configuration.

types:
- temperature
- fan
- voltage
- current
- power
- energy
- humidity

Troubleshooting​

Debug Mode​

To troubleshoot issues with the sensors collector, run the python.d.plugin with the debug option enabled. The output should give you clues as to why the collector isn't working.

  • Navigate to the plugins.d directory, usually at /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/. If that's not the case on your system, open netdata.conf and look for the plugins setting under [directories].

    cd /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/
  • Switch to the netdata user.

    sudo -u netdata -s
  • Run the python.d.plugin to debug the collector:

    ./python.d.plugin sensors debug trace

lm-sensors doesn't work on your device​

ACPI ring buffer errors are printed​


Do you have any feedback for this page? If so, you can open a new issue on our netdata/learn repository.