![\"Conky](\"http:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/screenshot.png\" "\\"Conky")
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Well, I started playing around with Conky<\/a> yesterday — if you haven’t heard of it before, just know that it’s a neat little Linux program that runs in your background and uses very little resources that displays a very neat desktop overlay.\u00c2\u00a0 (Like in the picture in the Lifehacker article.)<\/p>\n Now, some of the stock Conky scripts were more than adequate, but I had always wanted my laptop’s CPU temperature to be displayed as well, so I had to figure out a way to do that.<\/p>\n Now, if you’re somewhat familiar with tinkering in Linux, you’ve probably heard of the wonderful “lm_sensors” package — it’s a neat package for Linux that helps display lots of information about motherboard temps and whatnot.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, due to most laptops “prorietary-ness,” lm_sensors does very little for you if you’re trying to get it to work on a laptop.<\/p>\n Now, I had heard of the “i8kutils” package for Linux — this was a package designed for Dell laptops in particular, to display and control fan and temperature information.<\/p>\n So, with that, I was off to work!<\/p>\n (Note — these instructions are mostly for Ubuntu\/Debian installations, because that’s what I use.)<\/p>\n First, install the package “i8kutils” using your Linux computer’s package manager (Synaptic, if you’re using Ubuntu).<\/p>\n Second, add the module “i8k” to your “\/etc\/modules” file.\u00c2\u00a0 (This will start the process at boottime.)\u00c2\u00a0 Restart your laptop.<\/p>\n Third, you’ll have to create some Conky script files.\u00c2\u00a0 I assume you’ve already had a bit of experience at least installing Conky and starting it up.\u00c2\u00a0 If not, play around with the instructions in that Lifehacker article and come back here afterwards.<\/p>\n Now, I noticed that one of my conky script files was a file called “hddmonit.sh” which contained the text:<\/p>\n #!\/bin\/bash Now, using a little bit of deduction, I figured that this file used a command called “nc localhost 7634” to display a little bit of information, and then used pipe commands (the little “|” symbol) to further splice the info, extracting just the temperature of my laptop’s hard drive.<\/p>\n So, while “nc localhost 7634” outputted this:<\/p>\n |\/dev\/sda|ST980815A|43|C|<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Using the command “(nc localhost 7634 | cut -d’|’ -f4” would output just “43”, which was the temperature of my hard drive.<\/p>\n (The “cut” command splices out specific text from a string it’s given, in this case the fourth (-f4) chunk of text seperated by a “|” chracter.)<\/p>\n Now, I learned that the “i8k” module, once loaded, could be accessed with the file at\u00c2\u00a0 “\/proc\/i8k”, which just contains a string like:<\/p>\n 1.0 A32 7GGGGGG 53 -22 1 -22 90300 -1 2<\/p><\/blockquote>\n From this you can see various Dell-specific information, the important part being “53”, which was my current processor temp.\u00c2\u00a0 (The items in the string are separated by spaces.)<\/p>\n So, I quickly made myself a new script file called “i8ktemps.sh” copying the contents of “hddmonit.sh” and changing them to:<\/p>\n #!\/bin\/bash This file, when executed, will just output the fourth “chunk” in the file “\/proc\/i8k”, which as you remember is my current processor temp.<\/p>\n Now, I needed to edit my Conky configuration file, which is located in your home folder and is called “.conkyrc”.<\/p>\n Then I simply located the line:<\/p>\n ${font weather:size=28}x ${font}HDD ${execi 1 ~\/scripts\/hddmonit.sh}C<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Which displayed my hard drive temperature, and changed it to:<\/p>\n ${font weather:size=28}x ${font}CPU ${execi 1 ~\/scripts\/i8ktemps.sh}C HDD ${execi 1 ~\/scripts\/hddmonit.sh}C<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Which, when Conky was restarted, would display my hard drive temperature and<\/em> my current processor temperature.<\/p>\n See?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not that hard to program this stuff!\u00c2\u00a0 I did this all, both programming in the Linux “Bash” shell and coding in Conky’s personal configuration code, without any experience in either.\u00c2\u00a0 I just looked at what was there, and changed it.<\/p>\n Relevant Links:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.arachnoid.com\/linux\/shell_programming.html<\/a><\/p>\n http:\/\/ubuntuforums.org\/showthread.php?t=411800<\/a><\/p>\n
\necho “$(nc localhost 7634 | cut -d’|’ -f4)”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\necho “$(head \/proc\/i8k | cut -d’ ‘ -f4)”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n