1acpid(8) System Manager's Manual acpid(8)
2
6 acpid - Advanced Configuration and Power Interface event daemon
7
9 acpid [options]
10
13 acpid is designed to notify user-space programs of ACPI events. acpid
14 should be started during the system boot, and will run as a background
15 process, by default. It will open an events file (/proc/acpi/event by
16 default) and attempt to read whole lines. When a line is received (an
17 event), acpid will examine a list of rules, and execute the rules that
18 match the event. acpid will ignore all incoming ACPI events if a lock
19 file exists (/var/lock/acpid by default).
20 Rules are defined by simple configuration files. acpid will look in a
22 configuration directory (/etc/acpi/events by default), and parse all
23 regular files that do not begin with a period ('.') or end with a tilde
24 (~). Each file must define two things: an event and an action. Any
25 blank lines, or lines where the first character is a hash ('#') are
26 ignored. Extraneous lines are flagged as warnings, but are not fatal.
27 Each line has three tokens: the key, a literal equal sign, and the
28 value. The key can be up to 63 characters, and is case-insensitive
29 (but whitespace matters). The value can be up to 511 characters, and
30 is case and whitespace sensitive.
31 The event value is a regular expression (see regcomp(3)), against which
33 events are matched.
34 The action value is a commandline, which will be invoked via /bin/sh
36 whenever an event matching the rule in question occurs. The command‐
37 line may include shell-special characters, and they will be preserved.
38 The only special characters in an action value are "%" escaped. The
39 string "%e" will be replaced by the literal text of the event for which
40 the action was invoked. This string may contain spaces, so the comman‐
41 dline must take care to quote the "%e" if it wants a single token. The
42 string "%%" will be replaced by a literal "%". All other "%" escapes
43 are reserved, and will cause a rule to not load.
44 This feature allows multiple rules to be defined for the same event
46 (though no ordering is guaranteed), as well as one rule to be defined
47 for multiple events. To force acpid to reload the rule configuration,
48 send it a SIGHUP.
49 In addition to rule files, acpid also accepts connections on a UNIX
51 domain socket (/var/run/acpid.socket by default). Any application may
52 connect to this socket. Once connected, acpid will send the text of
53 all ACPI events to the client. The client has the responsibility of
54 filtering for messages about which it cares. acpid will not close the
55 client socket except in the case of a SIGHUP or acpid exiting.
56 acpid will log all of its activities, as well as the stdout and stderr
58 of any actions, to syslog.
59 All the default files and directories can be changed with commandline
61 options.
62
64 -c, --confdir directory
65 This option changes the directory in which acpid looks for
66 rule configuration files. Default is /etc/acpi/events.
67 -C, --clientmax number
69 This option changes the maximum number of non-root socket
70 connections which can be made to the acpid socket. Default
71 is 256.
72 -d, --debug This option increases the acpid debug level by one. If the
74 debug level is non-zero, acpid will run in the foreground,
75 and will log to stderr, in addition to the regular syslog.
76 -e, --eventfile filename
78 This option changes the event file from which acpid reads
79 events. Default is /proc/acpi/event.
80 -f, --foreground
82 This option keeps acpid in the foreground by not forking at
83 startup.
84 -l, --logevents
86 This option tells acpid to log information about all events
87 and actions.
88 -L, --lockfile filename
90 This option changes the lock file used to stop event pro‐
91 cessing. Default is /var/lock/acpid.
92 -g, --socketgroup groupname
94 This option changes the group ownership of the UNIX domain
95 socket to which acpid publishes events.
96 -m, --socketmode mode
98 This option changes the permissions of the UNIX domain
99 socket to which acpid publishes events. Default is 0666.
100 -s, --socketfile filename
102 This option changes the name of the UNIX domain socket
103 which acpid opens. Default is /var/run/acpid.socket.
104 -S, --nosocket filename
106 This option tells acpid not to open a UNIX domain socket.
107 This overrides the -s option, and negates all other socket
108 options.
109 -p, --pidfile filename
111 This option tells acpid to use the specified file as its
112 pidfile. If the file exists, it will be removed and over-
113 written. Default is /var/run/acpid.pid.
114 -v, --version
116 Print version information and exit.
117 -h, --help Show help and exit.
119
121 This example - placed in /etc/acpi/events/power - will shut down your
122 system if you press the power button.
123 event=button/power.*
125 action=/usr/local/sbin/power.sh "%e"
126 The script power.sh gets called and will see the complete event string
128 as parameter $1.
129
131 acpid should work on any linux kernel released since 2003.
132
134 /proc/acpi/event
135 /etc/acpi/
136 /var/run/acpid.socket
137 /var/run/acpid.pid
138 /var/lock/acpid
139
141 There are no known bugs. To file bug reports, see AUTHORS below.
142
144 regcomp(3), sh(1), socket(2), connect(2)
145
147 Tim Hockin <thockin@hockin.org>
148 acpid(8)