The fan in my laptop keeps coming on all the time, and it's getting a bit annoying.

I wondered what was going on with the CPU temperature, so I looked for a monitor, and I found one here.

It even had a deb file available, so I downloaded it, but when I tried to install it, it needed other packages.

Those were python2.3-gnome2-extras and python-gnome2-extras, so I grabbed those, and then I was able to install the monitor.

Now what? I don't know what the binary is called, or how I run it or anything.

I looked at the contents of the deb file, and realised it was a gnome-applet, so I went to see if I could add it to my bar, but found that it was not in the list.

Hmm. I tried to run the applet manually, but this just resulted in the error "Error importing laptoptemp libs", whatever that means.

I figured I probably needed to properly add it as an applet, and not try running it.

I looked in the applet list again, it still wasn't there, and I couldn't work out what I had to do to update the list.

I just added any old applet, and then removed it again, and this caused the applet list to update.

Now I could see "Laptop Temperature Monitor" in the list of available applets, but when I added it, I just got an error dialog, saying "The panel encountered a problem while loading OAFIID:GNOME_LaptoptempApplet".

I could ignore this error, or remove the applet, so I removed it.

I guess I'll have to try to find out what that error is, or what the laptoptemp libs are that it needs.