kacpimon(8)

✨ kacpimon — the manual page, but make it make sense 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to kacpimon(8) from the System Manager's Manual. yes it's a section 8 page, yes it's for sysadmin girlies, and yes we're gonna get through it together 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

kacpimon — the Kernel ACPI Event Monitor. that's the whole name, that's the whole vibe 💅

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

no flags, no arguments, no drama. just:

kacpimon

that's it. she's simple. she's iconic. ✨

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so kacpimon is a monitor program, and what she does is connect to three different sources of ACPI events:

1. /proc/acpi/event
2. netlink
3. the input layer (/dev/input/event*)

once she's plugged into all three, kacpimon just... reports on what she sees while she's connected 👀 lowkey a surveillance arc but for your kernel.

use kacpimon to make sure your kernel is actually sending acpi-related events through those three sources up there. like a vibe check for your kernel, fr fr.

⚠️ bestie listen. acpid(8) and kacpimon connect to the same sources. so you must stop acpid(8) before you run kacpimon. non-negotiable. they cannot both be main character.

so how do you stop it? depends on your init situation, and there are options:

• if you're on upstart(7), use initctl(8) to stop acpid(8)
• if you're on systemd(1), use systemctl(1) to stop acpid(8)
• if you're on neither of those, you can try killall(1) to stop acpid(8)

and ngl, you gotta run kacpimon as root or she literally cannot open /proc/acpi/event or the input layer. it's giving locked out of the group chat 😭

sudo kacpimon

one more thing, and this one is a real gotcha: if you want to pipe the output of kacpimon to a file, you have to exit with the "Esc" key, not Ctrl-C. hitting Ctrl-C will cause output to be be lost. so if you Ctrl-C and your file is empty, that's why. don't do it. i'm begging 🙈

🦋 FILES 🦋

• /proc/acpi/event — the kernel ACPI event file. the og source, periodt.
• /dev/input/event* — the input layer event files. yes, the whole glob. all of them. 💅

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

go read these too, bestie, they're the friend group:

• acpi_listen(8)
• acpid(8)

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Ted Felix <www.tedfelix.com> — we love him, we thank him, he gave us this tool 🫶

💀 TODO 💀

• Make kacpimon something that actually gets installed?

that's it. that's the entire todo. one item. the audacity, the honesty, i'm obsessed 😭

🍓 LICENSE 🍓

okay legal moment, bestie, but we keep every word:

kacpimon - Kernel ACPI Event Monitor Copyright (C) 2009-2013 Ted Felix (www.tedfelix.com)

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Or visit www.gnu.org.

and that's the page, girlypop 💜 this manual was last touched in Jan 2013 and it's still serving kacpimon(8) energy today. slay, run it as root, hit Esc, and hydrate 🌸✨