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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
       stdout,  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
       rotation 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
       possible  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)