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I've finally managed to set up my two ATI Radeon 6950 video cards in my machine, but the cards can get quite hot. Based on the arrangement of my apartment, I want to be able to SSH into the machine an execute a command to find out the temperature. What I have tried so far is this...

export DISPLAY=:0.0
sudo aticonfig --adapter=0 --od-gettemperature

However, when I do that via SSH, I get the following error:

ERROR - X needs to be running to perform ATI Overdrive(TM) commands

If I turn on X forwarding when I remote into the machine, then it just seems to affect my local machine instead of the remote machine.

Am I doing this correctly? Is there a better way to monitor my video card's temperature?

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You could try acpi -t? – nodiscc Jun 24 '11 at 0:37
Nothing appears when I do that command; is there some special setup necessary? – NT3RP Jun 25 '11 at 12:47
the acpi utility is in the... acpi package. Maybe it doesn't work for you? Also, have a look at the lm-sensors package (package info, tools inside, manpages..), it should have what you need – nodiscc Jul 5 '11 at 0:11
If you're using X forwarding when you SSH into the machine (ssh -X), don't change the DISPLAY variable before you run aticonfig. Setting DISPLAY to :0.0 will override the X forwarding and tell aticonfig to display on the server, which isn't what you want. – Mox Mar 11 at 15:23
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lm-sensors will display the temp for most new radeons, if using the open source drivers. If the closed drivers need to access X before getting information, try exporting DISPLAY after changing to root and copying the .Xauthority file from the user's directory to root's home

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If the tool is somehow getting the temperature data from the X server, then redirecting DISPLAY will always get the data from wherever it is being displayed and not the system running the tool. – Zan Lynx Jul 16 '11 at 4:52
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