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                        KHealthCare
                        Version 0.8
                        Jan 2001

Introduction

KHealthCare is a hardware monitoring program. It utilizes the hardware monitoring chip most modern mainboards have built in to monitor, display and control your board's and / or CPU temperature, fan speeds, and voltages. The user is notified through message boxes if any monitored value exceeds the given limits, and the system speaker gives a warning tone if the monitoring chip supports this. If the user does not react, KHealthCare can shut down the system.

KHealthCare uses lm_sensors as a backend for hardware communications, which is a collection of kernel modules that will be included in the 2.4.x kernel.

Programs like this are existing for Windows users for quite some time, but Linux users have been unable to use their board's full power in the past. This program is meant to help filling the gap and make an average Linux user's life a bit more comfortable, and safer for your hardware.

System Requirements

Software

To run KHealthCare, you must

be running Linux
be running KDE, version 2.0 or later
have lm_sensors 2.5.2 or later installed, set up and working.

Hardware

Since version 0.7, KHealthCare can autoprobe sensor features. Thus, it supports any chip lm_sensors can handle.

The following chips are explicitly known by KHealthCare:

Analog Devices:

adm9240

Asus: AF99127F

Dallas Semiconductor:

ds1780

Genesys Logic:

GL518SM, GL520SM

National Semiconductors:

LM 75, 78, 78-J, 79, 80, 81

Silicon Integrated Systems:

SiS 5595

Winbond: w83781d, w83782d, w83783s, w83627hf

lm_sensors preparation

KHealthCare demands the following preconditions concerning lm_sensors: You must have a config file for lm_sensors in /etc , named sensors.conf You must have set the following labels for your chip's features if they are supported, to give KHealthCare the chance to identify which label correlates to which feature name:

"fan1", "fan2", "fan3" for the fan speeds

"temp1", "temp2", "temp3" for temperatures, or "temp" if there is only one temp sensor

"VCore 1", "VCore 2" for CPU core voltages,

"+3.3V", "+5V", "-5V", "+12V", "-12V" for the remaining voltages.

Installing KhealthCare

This software uses autoconf. Therefore, you shouldn't have much problems to compile it. Just type

# ./configure
# make
# make install

as root.

You must make sure to have the program running SUID root, so that you will be able to change the limits settings, and not only measuring values. To achieve this, type

# cd $KDEDIR/bin
# chmod u+s khealthcare

as root.

Now if you restart the KDE panel, you should have a brand new entry in the System menu, saying "KhealthCare". Click it to start the program. For more detailed instructions, see the file INSTALL.

Getting Started

If you started the program in the way I stated above, you will see a panel with a some LCD-like displays. Those represent the values of the systems' voltages, temperatures and fan speeds, as far as your monitoring chip provides these features.
Besides of each LCD display, there is a spin box, which lets you set ( upper and lower where applicable ) limits for each sensor. If spin boxes are grayed out, this feature has only one or even no configuration setting.
If these set values are exceeded, you will by default hear a warning tone if your monitoring chip can do this, and see a message box which notifies you of the type of the crisis detected. The according display will change color as long as the critical condition persists.
Now you should react quickly to prevent your system from severe damage ! If you can't, for example because you're running a server and don't consider it much fun to sit beside it all day and hear the hard disks spinning, KhealthCare shuts down your system after a configurable amount of time.

Removing KhealthCare

KhealthCare will uninstall just by typing make uninstall' as root from the directory where you extracted the archive file. After that, you can safely delete this directory.

Bug Reports

I want my program to be as useful as possible. I consider it quite useful already, but it's still in an early state and subject to further development. Therefore I need your help as beta testers. Please email any bugs you encounter or features you'd like to see included to me at Ruediger.Anlauf@gmx.net

LEGAL STUFF

Warranty

Please note that there is NO WARRANTY for this program. It is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, not even the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.
The copyright holder of this software is not liable to your damages, including any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use the program.