Monitor your CPU temperatures with lm-sensors and sensors-applet

Power users are often concerned with making sure the components in their machines are running at appropriate temperatures. An unusual rise in the temperature of a CPU, for example, could indicate a poorly attached fan or generally suboptimal cooling configuration. This tip shows you how to add CPU temperature displays (and potentially more) to you Gnome desktop panel.

1. First off, make sure you have the 'universe' repository enabled. (See this previous tip if you don't know how to do this.)
2. Install the lm-sensors and sensors-applet packages. You can use the standard Synaptic package management tool, or from a terminal:
   

   sudo apt-get install lm-sensors sensors-applet
   

3. Add the sensors applet to your desktop panel. Right click on an empty are of your panel, and choose Add to Panel.... Then choose the Hardware Sensors Monitor entry out of the list.

If, after performing these steps, you don't see any temperature displays in your panel, it could be that lm-sensors does not support the particular sensors available in your machine. You can double check this by running the sensors command in a terminal to see if lm-sensors can find any supported sensors.

Source : Ubuntutips.net