POWERD(8)

NAME
powerd - power management daemon for sysmon

SYNOPSIS
powerd [-d]

DESCRIPTION
powerd acts upon power management events posted by the kernel's power management facility. When events are posted, powerd translates the event into a script name and a list of arguments. powerd then runs the script in order to implement the power management policy defined by the system administrator.

powerd supports the following option:

-d  Enable debugging mode. Verbose messages will be sent to stderr and powerd will stay in the foreground of the controlling terminal.

CONFIGURATION SCRIPTS
All of powerd's configuration is encapsulated into scripts that are run when power management events occur. powerd will look for these scripts in two locations. The first location is /etc/powerd/scripts/power_type, where <power_type> is defined by the power management mechanism supported by the system, e.g., “apm” or “acpi”. If the script is not found in the first location, powerd looks in /etc/powerd/scripts.

Configuration scripts are run synchronously, i.e., powerd will start the script and wait for its completion before it handles the next event.

Configuration scripts are called with different arguments, depending on the script class. These classes are described in the following sections.

  POWER SWITCH SCRIPTS
Power switch scripts are called when a state change event occurs on a power switch device. Power switch scripts are called with two arguments: the device with which the device is associated, and the event type.

The following power switch script names are defined:

power_button
    This script is called when an event occurs on a power button device.

reset_button
    This script is called when an event occurs on a reset button device.

sleep_button
    This script is called when an event occurs on a sleep button device.

lid_switch
    This script is called when an event occurs on a lid switch device.

acadapter
    This script is called when an online or offline event occurs on an AC adapter device.

The following events are defined for power switch devices:

pressed
    The button was pressed, the lid closed, or the AC adapter connected.

released
    The button was released, the lid opened, or the AC adapter disconnected. Note that power and sleep button devices usually do not post this type of event.

The following is an example of how a power button script might be invoked when a power button is pressed by the operator:

    /etc/powerd/scripts/power_button acpi0 pressed

SEE ALSO
acpi(4), acpiacad(4), acpibut(4), acpilid(4), apm(4)

HISTORY
powerd first appeared in NetBSD 2.0.

AUTHORS
powerd was written by Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@wasabisystems.com> and contributed by Wasabi Systems, Inc.

BUGS
Due to its synchronous nature powerd cannot be trusted to handle events within a certain time.