<Solved> Mint 21: Package 'hddtemp' has no installation candidate

[Pheeble]

It seems that Ubuntu 22.04 has dropped the 'hddtemp' package, which means that it will not be available in Mint 21.

This is in Mint 21 XFCE:

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sudo apt install hddtemp
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Package hddtemp is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'hddtemp' has no installation candidate

Now I'll have to hunt around and see if I can find an alternative...

[xenopeek]

hddtemp was removed from the Debian for this reason: https://sources.debian.org/src/hddtemp/ ... bian/NEWS/. Because it is no longer in Debian, it's no longer in Ubuntu 22.04 and thus not in Linux Mint 21.

The alternative is easy. Run this command to load the kernel driver that can read drive temperatures:
sudo modprobe drivetemp

Then run the command:
sensors

And it will print the drive temperatures, and information from other sensors. If you haven't done so previously, run the command sudo sensors-detect to detect the available sensors on your hardware. This doesn't load the drivetemp kernel module thus you have to do that manually as above.

If this works you can automatically load the drivetemp kernel module every boot by running this command to create the necessary configuration file for that:
echo drivetemp | sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/drivetemp.conf

[Pheeble]

Thanks!

I didn't know about 'drivetemp' in the kernel. It works perfectly, and it doesn't require sudo.

In hunting around, I also found that smartctl from smartmontools can get the drive temperature:

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sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep 'Temperature_Celsius'
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   117   106   000    Old_age   Always       -       26

smartctl requires sudo, so I'll be using drivetemp.

[ajgreeny]

Glad you got that solved but just for your information it is still possible to run the same package of hddtemp that came from Ubuntu 20.04 with no problems.

How long that will stay possible is, of course, something I can't tell you.

[billyswong]

I just adopted the mate-sensors-applet to use the new drivetemp.

In comparison to hddtemp, which I carefully kept during the Mint 21 upgrade process, the new drivetemp lacks descriptive device names. All drives call themselves "temp1". Any idea how to improve that?
(The multi-temperature display of mate-sensors-applet was the main reason I chose Mate edition over Cinnamon. Cinnamon may be also capable of that after some tweaking, but I didn't bother.)

[xenopeek]

All drives call themselves "temp1".

Isn't there an adapter name above it? I can't check here as only one of my drives shows temperature. Try with sensors -u or sensors -j if you can see more context with that. Maybe you can customize the label with your /etc/sensors3.conf file? See the sensors.conf manpage.

[billyswong]

All drives call themselves "temp1".

Isn't there an adapter name above it? I can't check here as only one of my drives shows temperature. Try with sensors -u or sensors -j if you can see more context with that.

I end up figuring out I can "click" in Sensors Applet Preference dialog to edit labels. So I use their different temperatures to figure out which is which then relabel them. It is not ideal but bearable. To sensors (same after -u or -j), drivetemp is giving generic adapter names such as "drivetemp-scsi-4-0" and "drivetemp-scsi-0-0", probably in accordance to the ports they plugged onto motherboard. Sensors from hddtemp know the drives' model. I guess drivetemp's approach is better if a user plugs multiple drives of the same model into the computer, while less friendly when users don't remember the ports but remember the different drive models.

mate-sensor-applet can improve itself by combining the adapter name and the sensor name when naming sensors from libsensors.

[xenopeek]

inxi -Dx for me shows the drive brand and model name + temperature. The information can be mapped together and it's too bad that sensors doesn't do this on its own.

Give that the temp1_input variable will always be set on drives that support drivetemp https://docs.kernel.org/hwmon/drivetemp.html, you can piece it together yourself to from /sys filesystem though I don't know exactly how to map it to "drivetemp-scsi-4-0" name either.

On my system the command find /sys/devices/pci* -name temp1_input finds all the drives that support it. Outputs for me:

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/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.2/ata3/host2/target2:0:0/2:0:0:0/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input

That hwmon0 directory has the drivetemp variables as described in above link.

If from there you go 2 directories up there is a text file 'model' that has the drive model name:

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/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.2/ata3/host2/target2:0:0/2:0:0:0/model