1DBUS-MONITOR(1)                  User Commands                 DBUS-MONITOR(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       dbus-monitor - debug probe to print message bus messages
7

SYNOPSIS

9       dbus-monitor [--system | --session | --address ADDRESS] [--profile |
10                    --monitor | --pcap | --binary] [watch expressions]
11
12

DESCRIPTION

14       The dbus-monitor command is used to monitor messages going through a
15       D-Bus message bus. See http://www.freedesktop.org/software/dbus/ for
16       more information about the big picture.
17
18       There are two well-known message buses: the systemwide message bus
19       (installed on many systems as the "messagebus" service) and the
20       per-user-login-session message bus (started each time a user logs in).
21       The --system and --session options direct dbus-monitor to monitor the
22       system or session buses respectively. If neither is specified,
23       dbus-monitor monitors the session bus.
24
25       dbus-monitor has two different text output modes: the 'classic'-style
26       monitoring mode, and profiling mode. The profiling format is a compact
27       format with a single line per message and microsecond-resolution timing
28       information. The --profile and --monitor options select the profiling
29       and monitoring output format respectively.
30
31       dbus-monitor also has two binary output modes. The binary mode,
32       selected by --binary, outputs the entire binary message stream (without
33       the initial authentication handshake). The PCAP mode, selected by
34       --pcap, adds a PCAP file header to the beginning of the output, and
35       prepends a PCAP message header to each message; this produces a binary
36       file that can be read by, for instance, Wireshark.
37
38       If no mode is specified, dbus-monitor uses the monitoring output
39       format.
40
41       In order to get dbus-monitor to see the messages you are interested in,
42       you should specify a set of watch expressions as you would expect to be
43       passed to the dbus_bus_add_match function.
44
45       The message bus configuration may keep dbus-monitor from seeing all
46       messages, especially if you run the monitor as a non-root user.
47

OPTIONS

49       --system
50           Monitor the system message bus.
51
52       --session
53           Monitor the session message bus. (This is the default.)
54
55       --address ADDRESS
56           Monitor an arbitrary message bus given at ADDRESS.
57
58       --profile
59           Use the profiling output format.
60
61       --monitor
62           Use the monitoring output format. (This is the default.)
63

EXAMPLE

65       Here is an example of using dbus-monitor to watch for the gnome typing
66       monitor to say things
67
68
69             dbus-monitor "type='signal',sender='org.gnome.TypingMonitor',interface='org.gnome.TypingMonitor'"
70
71

AUTHOR

73       dbus-monitor was written by Philip Blundell. The profiling output mode
74       was added by Olli Salli.
75

BUGS

77       Please send bug reports to the D-Bus mailing list or bug tracker, see
78       http://www.freedesktop.org/software/dbus/
79
80
81
82D-Bus 1.14.10                     09/01/2023                   DBUS-MONITOR(1)