i8kmon(1)							     Utilities								 i8kmon(1)

NAME

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

SYNTAX

       i8kmon [<options>]

DESCRIPTION

       The i8kmon daemon can be used to monitor the cpu temperature and fan status on Dell Inspiron 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 std-
       out, 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 rota-
       tion 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.

       -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  possi-
       ble  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 (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...]

SEE ALSO

       i8kctl(1), i8kbuttons(1)

Massimo Dal Zotto						   17 June 2005 							 i8kmon(1)