Gathering Core i7 temperatures with Linux

Debian’s standard kernel 2.6.26 has a little drawback: The coretemp module doesn’t recognize Intel’s Core i7 processor. The sensor chip W83667HG of my Asus P6T Deluxe (LGA 1366 socket) is not yet supported as well. This is a typical symptom when using Linux on too recent hardware. However, if it’s enough for you to read an aggregated CPU temperature instead of eight individual core temperatures, you can force loading the w83627ehf module with

and tune the /etc/sensors3.conf to get rid of false alarms.

Luckily, for the current prerelease 2.6.29-rc6 there’s a very recent bunch of patches available that brings support for W83667HG into the w83627ehf module, whereas coretemp already finds the CPU. Follow this guide on how to compile and install a new kernel the Debian way. A drawback is that source modules from the official Debian repositories might not compile anymore, e.g. the MadWifi modules. You have to get them from the project directly (via SVN). You also need to build a current version of lm-sensors (via SVN) to correctly gather the values from w83627ehf. You could then visualize the values e.g. with gkrellm.

Now have fun stress-testing your system with MPrime.

Update 03/24: It appears that these patches didn’t make it into the final 2.6.29 release.

Update 04/09: The patches went into 2.6.30-rc1.