lm-sensors vs smartmontools
lm-sensors
github.comsmartmontools
smartmontools.orgSide by side
| Figure | lm-sensors | smartmontools |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Hardware monitoring tools | 8.0 (#26) | 8.7 (#9) |
| Spec score · Hardware Monitoring Software | 7.9 (#28) | 7.9 (#30) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| License | The libsensors library is released under LGPL and the rest of the package may be distributed under GPL. | Smartmontools is licensed under the GNU GPL Version 2. |
| Monitoring daemon | sensord watches sensor values, logs problems, and includes RRD support. | smartd periodically monitors S.M.A.R.T. status and reports errors and attribute changes to syslog. |
| Purpose | lm-sensors provides user-space support for hardware monitoring drivers in Linux 2.6.5 and later. | Smartmontools provides utilities to control and monitor storage systems using S.M.A.R.T. |
| Supported platforms | Linux | Darwin (Mac OS X),Linux,FreeBSD,NetBSD,OpenBSD,Solaris,OS/2,Cygwin,QNX,eComStation,Windows |
Plans
In their own words
smartmontools
smartmontools is a free package containing smartctl and smartd for controlling and monitoring storage devices through SMART. It supports ATA/SATA, SCSI/SAS, and NVMe disks, as well as SCSI/SAS tape devices. smartctl can report SMART health status, show capabilities such as error logging and offline surface scanning, display vendor-specific attributes, start device self-tests, and read their logs. A failing health status can mean a device has failed or predicts failure within 24 hours. smartd periodically monitors SMART status, error and self-test logs, and attribute changes; it can schedule tests and report errors and attribute changes to syslog. It also supports warning emails and executable commands. The project says it should run on modern Linux, BSD variants, macOS, Solaris, Windows, Cygwin, OS/2, eComStation, and QNX systems, and can run from various Live CDs and DVDs. The package uses the GNU GPL Version 2 license and was originally derived from the Linux smartsuite package. Its capabilities focus on SMART health reporting, testing, and ongoing monitoring.