As you will be installing packages, you will need root access. Launch the terminal and login as root:

% su

Once you are login as root, you will be able to install the necessary packages you want.

If you would like to be able to monitor the temperature of your harddisk, you would need to perform this step. Otherwise, this step is optional.

% yum -y install hddtemp

Once you have it installed, you must now configure it so that it will know which harddisk to monitor. To do that, you must first know what are the harddisk you have on your machine.

% df

Using the df command, you will see the amount of disk space used. But what we really want to know is where the harddisk is.

You should see the output similar to this:

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
 /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
                      149528884  28783984 113149280  21% /
 /dev/sda1               194442     28037    156366  16% /boot
 tmpfs                  1036440       516   1035924   1% /dev/shm

In this case, the harddisk we are interested in is /dev/sda1. Now, we need to edit the configuration file of hddtemp, so that it will knows to read the temperature of the harddisk.

% gedit /etc/sysconfig/hddtemp

Note: You must launch the configuration file from the terminal while logged in as root user in order to edit the configuration file!!

Insert an additional line to reflect the new hard disk. Your edited configuration file should look something similar to this:

 #
  # hddtemp(8) daemon options. Add at least the disk(s) you want to monitor here.
  #
  HDDTEMP_OPTIONS=”/dev/sda1″

Save the file.

You will now need to enable the hddtemp service to start running on boot.

Go to System > Administration > Services

Look for hddtemp, select it, and click on the Enable button. This will allow hddtemp to start up everytime you boot your machine.

You will now need to install the lm_sensors package.

% yum -y install lm_sensors

We will now need to configure lm_sensors so that it will know what are the available sensors it can monitor. We can do that by calling a utility called sensors-detect.

% sensors-detect

sensors-detect will prompt you a series of question, asking if you want to search a list of hardware for sensors that it can monitor. Chances are you will answer Yes to all the prompt.

The final package that needs to be installed is the applet. This allows the parameter that is being monitored to visually be displayed on your panel.

% yum -y install gnome-applet-sensors

Once that is installed, you will want to log out and login again so that the list of applet refreshes to include the new applet.

After you re-login, right click on the Top Panel, and select "Add to Panel..."

Select "Hardware Sensors Monitor" and click on the "Add" button.

You will now see the row of icon that monitors all the parameter of your machine at the Top Panel.