Command Line – lm-sensors

Hardware temperatures have long been the concern of system administrators and server farms. However, with summer and the recent record temperatures worldwide, excess heat inside a computer case has become every user's concern. Too much heat can cause a computer to act erratically. In extreme cases, overheating can result in your computer shutting down until it cools off or, worse, cause permanent damage to sensitive components. If you're using a laptop positioned on your bare legs, you could even suffer third-degree burns.

With so much at stake, there is a real need to monitor hardware temperatures, at least on new machines, on hotter days and during long sessions on your computer. On Linux, you have a number of utilities that will read temperature settings, but many are minimally useful or even obsolete. As a result, you not only have the heat to contend with, but also inadequate or obsolete tools as well. Fortunately, the lm-sensors (Linux monitoring sensors) [1] package can help solve this problem, although it does require some setup and the loading of kernel modules.

A Matter of Thermodynamics

Quite simply, computer components give off heat when they are in use. When crammed into a confined space, their heat can easily increase rather than disperse. Faster components generally produce more heat. The problem can be especially difficult with a laptop, whose components are crammed into an even smaller space than in a workstation or server. The trend in the last decade toward thinner and thinner laptops aggravates the problem even further.

[...]