Temperature Monitoring

Pulse can collect host temperatures in two supported ways:

Pulse agent on Proxmox hosts (recommended)
SSH-based collection from the Pulse server (fallback or for non-agent hosts)

If you are upgrading from older releases that used pulse-sensor-proxy, see the legacy cleanup section below. The sensor proxy is no longer supported in Pulse.

Recommended: Pulse Agent (Proxmox)

The unified agent runs on each Proxmox host and reports temperatures locally with no SSH keys needed.

curl -fsSL http://<pulse-ip>:7655/install.sh | \
  bash -s -- --url http://<pulse-ip>:7655 --token <api-token> --enable-proxmox

Notes:

Install lm-sensors on each host (apt install lm-sensors && sensors-detect --auto).
Temperatures appear automatically once the agent reports.

SSH-Based Collection (Fallback)

Pulse can also collect temperatures by SSHing into each host and running sensors -j, with a fallback to /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp when available (for example, on Raspberry Pi).

Requirements

SSH connectivity from the Pulse server to each host
lm-sensors installed and sensors -j returning JSON on the host
A restricted SSH key entry that only allows sensors -j

Setup

Generate the node setup command from the UI: Settings -> Proxmox -> Add Node
Run the command on each Proxmox host. The setup script can:
- Create the required API user and permissions
- Add a restricted SSH key entry for temperature collection
- Install lm-sensors (optional)

The SSH entry added to authorized_keys is restricted to sensors -j, for example:

command="sensors -j",no-port-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding,no-agent-forwarding,no-pty <public-key> # pulse-sensors

If you use a non-standard SSH port, set SSH_PORT (system-wide) or configure it in Settings -> System.

Containerized Pulse

SSH-based collection from inside a container is not recommended for production. Prefer the agent method or run Pulse on the host. For dev/test, you can allow SSH from the container with:

PULSE_DEV_ALLOW_CONTAINER_SSH=true

Verification

From the Pulse server, verify that SSH and sensors output work:

ssh -i /path/to/key root@node "sensors -j"

For platforms that expose a thermal zone file:

ssh -i /path/to/key root@node "cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp"

Troubleshooting

If sensors -j returns empty output, run sensors-detect --auto and retry.
If temperatures show as unavailable, confirm the host actually exposes sensor data.
Ensure the SSH key entry is present and restricted to sensors -j.

Legacy Cleanup (If Upgrading)

If you still have the old sensor proxy installed from prior releases, remove it from each Proxmox host (not the Pulse container) with the supported cleanup helper:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rcourtman/Pulse/release/5.1/scripts/uninstall-sensor-proxy.sh | \
  sudo bash -s -- --uninstall --purge

If you also want to remove the pulse-monitor@pam API user/tokens for a full clean slate before re-adding the node, include --remove-proxmox-access:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rcourtman/Pulse/release/5.1/scripts/uninstall-sensor-proxy.sh | \
  sudo bash -s -- --uninstall --purge --remove-proxmox-access

Reinstalling or upgrading the Pulse container does not remove the sensor proxy from the host — they are separate installations. If you skip this cleanup, the selfheal timer will keep running and may generate recurring TASK ERROR entries in the Proxmox task log.

LXC Container Config Cleanup

The v4 installer also added mount entries for /run/pulse-sensor-proxy to the LXC container config (/etc/pve/lxc/<ctid>.conf). After a host reboot, /run is cleared and the mount source no longer exists, which prevents the container from starting. To check for and remove stale entries:

# Check for stale sensor-proxy mount entries
grep -n 'pulse-sensor-proxy' /etc/pve/lxc/*.conf

# Remove mp<N> entries (container must be stopped)
# Replace mp0 with the actual key shown in the grep output (mp0, mp1, etc.)
pct set <ctid> -delete mp0

# Remove lxc.mount.entry lines
sed -i '/lxc\.mount\.entry:.*pulse-sensor-proxy/d' /etc/pve/lxc/<ctid>.conf

Re-running the Pulse installer on the Proxmox host also performs this cleanup automatically.

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