lmsensors comes pre-installed on OpenSUSE. At least it was installed on my system which was installed from a DVD. IMHO instead of compiling lmsensors yourself, you should use the distro supplied version. This will provide you with proper start-up scripts installed in appropriate places.
After you have installed lmsensors using yast, you need to configure it. This can be done using sensors-detect script that comes with lmsensors. You just need to execute "sensors-detect" as root in a terminal window and then follow the onscreen instructions. Once the script detects all the sensors available on your motherboard, it creates valid sensors.conf file. After this, start lmsensors service from the service manager and you should have lmsensors working.
To test whether lmsensors is working or not, just execute "sensors" command as a normal user in a terminal window. If you get temp, voltage and fan rpm outputs then everything is working fine. Now, you can use programs like gkrellm or gdesklets widgets to read your sensors outputs.
