How To Check CPU Temperature on Ubuntu

In this tutorial, we will show you how to check CPU temperature on Ubuntu. For those of you who didn’t know, CPU temperature monitoring can help you overcome the overheating issue by closing unnecessary system applications. So it is important to monitor your system’s CPU temperature to avoid damaging it as a result of overheating.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Duf on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Check CPU Temperature on Ubuntu

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Check CPU temperature on Ubuntu.

There are two ways that you can use to check your CPU temperature: Using the lm_sensors tool or the Psensor graphical tool.

• Install lm_sensor.

Lm_sensors comes pre-installed with most modern Linux operating systems. If it is not installed already, you can install it as shown below:

sudo apt install lm-sensors hddtemp

Once installed, run the following command to configure lm_sensors:

sudo sensors-detect

When the configuration is done, check the CPU temperature by invoking the sensors command. This will display the temperature of your CPU cores as shown below:

$ sensors

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0:  +54.0°C  (high = +79.0°C, crit = +83.0°C)
Core 0:        +54.0°C  (high = +79.0°C, crit = +83.0°C)
Core 1:        +52.0°C  (high = +79.0°C, crit = +83.0°C)

BAT0-acpi-0
Adapter: ACPI interface
in0:          12.43 V  
curr1:       1000.00 uA 

dell_smm-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
Processor Fan: 3449 RPM
CPU:            +59.0°C  
Other:          +52.0°C  
Other:          +51.0°C  
GPU:            +14.0°C  
Other:          +51.0°C  

acpitz-acpi-0
Adapter: ACPI interface
temp1:        +57.5°C  (crit = +84.0°C)

• Install Psensors tool.

Psensor is a graphical tool that relies on the lm_sensors program to display temperature readings in a graphical format. Run the following command to install it:

sudo apt install psensor

Once the installation is complete, you can use the application to search for the Psensor application and launch it. Therefore, the window below will be displayed:

Congratulations! You have successfully installed check CPU temperature. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing check CPU temperature on your Ubuntu system.