BATTMOND(1)

NAME
battmond - monitor battery level on ACPI-enabled (laptop) computers

SYNOPSIS
battmond [-d device] [-i interval] [-W warning] [-H halt] [-h]

DESCRIPTION
battmond monitors the battery level on your ACPI-enabled (laptop) computer. Battmond probes your battery level in predefined intervals. When the battery level is running low it writes a warning message to the syslog. On critical level, it powers the computer down. Both levels and the probe interval can be configured on the command line.

battmond probes the battery level through the ACPIIO_BATT_GET_BATTINFO ioctl(2) on /dev/acpi. -d option allows for defining a different device, although you shouldn't (probably) need it. Probes are performed in regular intervals of 10 seconds. This value can be tweaked through the -i option. When the computer is on battery (i.e. there is a battery present and no power cord is connected), battmond checks the battery level against two values: the warning and the halt threshold. If the battery level goes below the former, a warning is sent to the syslog with a priority of LOG_ALERT. If it goes below the latter, battmond initiates a system shutdown, through a call to /sbin/halt. The warning and halt thresholds can be tuned using the -W and -H options respectively. Values are expressed in percentage of maximum charge, with default values being 10 (%) for the warning message and 5 (%) for the system halt. Finally, -h prints a brief help message to the stderr and terminates the program.

SEE ALSO
acpi(1), ioctl(2)

AUTHOR
Nikos Ntarmos <ntarmos@ceid.upatras.gr>