APMD(8)             Linux Programmer's Manual             APMD(8)

NAME
       apmd - Advanced Power Management (APM) BIOS daemon

SYNOPSIS
       apmd [ -vVuW ] [ -p percent_change ] [ -w warn_percent ]

DESCRIPTION
       apmd  is  an APM BIOS monitoring daemon.  It will log, via
       syslogd(2), changes in APM power status (e.g., on  or  off
       AC  power,  discharging  or  charging  battery).  When the
       available battery power  becomes  very  low,  it  can  use
       wall(1)  to  alert  all users on the system.  When the APM
       BIOS notifies the daemon of a pending suspend  or  standby
       request,  apmd will call sync(2), sleep for 2 seconds, and
       then tell the APM BIOS to continue its operation.  When  a
       critical resume occurs, apmd will make a feable attempt to
       reset the clock.

       The information logged contains 4 fields:

       1) Rate of  discharge  (percent/minute).   Negative  rates
              indicate charging.

       2)  Time since total charge or total discharge (hh:mm:ss).
              This value is only useful if it reflects  the  time
              since  a 100% or 0% state has been reached.  Other-
              wise, this time is in parentheses, and reflects the
              time since the last important apmd status change.

       3)  Estimate  of time left until total discharge (or total
              charge), assuming use similar  to  that  since  the
              last  resume  (  or  since AC was connected).  This
              time is calculated by apmd itself.

       4) Parenthetically, the percent and  length  of  remaining
              battery  life,  as estimated by the APM BIOS (which
              is often an estimate from the  intelligent  battery
              itself).

OPTIONS
       -V, --version
              Print version and exit.

       -v, --verbose
              Log all APM events

       -u, --utc
              BIOS  clock  is set to UTC (GMT), so pass -u option
              to clock or hwclock program when coming out of sus-
              pend mode.

       -p percent_change, --percentage percent_change
              Every   time  the  percentage  of  available  power
              changes by percent_change,  log  information.   The
              default  is 5.  Use values greater than 100 to dis-
              able this feature.

       -w warn_percent, --warn warn_percent
              When the battery is not being charged and the  per-
              centage  of  available  power drops below warn_per-
              cent, log a warning at ALERT  level  to  syslog(2).
              If  the -W or --wall flag was given, use wall(1) to
              alert all users of impending doom.  Give the  warn-
              ing  each time the percentage changes.  The default
              is 10.  Use negative values to  disable  this  fea-
              ture.

       -W, --wall
              In  addition  to  logging  via  syslog(2), also use
              wall(1) to alert all users.  This is most useful if
              syslogd(8) is not set up to write ALERT messages to
              all users.  If both methods are  used,  more  noise
              will be made during the critical time period.

BUGS
       The  first  status report printed after a power change may
       be inaccurate because the power change occured at a  frac-
       tional  percentage  that was rounded to a full percentage.
       For example, say you are discharging the machine and  have
       50.9%  power, which is reported as 50%.  When you start to
       charge the machine, it will only have 0.1% left before the
       percentage  flips to 51%, and the charge rate will be dra-
       matically over-estimated.

FILES
       /proc/apm
       /proc/devices

AUTHOR
       This program was written by Rik  Faith  (faith@cs.unc.edu)
       and  may  be freely distributed under the terms of the GNU
       General Public License.  There is ABSOLUTELY  NO  WARRANTY
       for  this  program.   The current maintainer is Avery Pen-
       narun (apenwarr@worldvisions.ca).

SEE ALSO
       apm(1), xapmd(1)

                           10 Jan 1996                          1