I3STATUS(1)							     i3 Manual							       I3STATUS(1)

NAME

       i3status - Generates a status line for dzen2 or xmobar

SYNOPSIS

       i3status [-c configfile] [-h] [-v]

OPTIONS

       -c
	   Specifies an alternate configuration file path. By default, i3status looks for configuration files in the following order:

	    1. ~/.i3status.conf

	    2. ~/.config/i3status/config (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/i3status/config if set)

	    3. /etc/i3status.conf

	    4. /etc/xdg/i3status/config (or $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/i3status/config if set)

DESCRIPTION

       i3status is a small program (about 1500 SLOC) for generating a status bar for i3bar, dzen2, xmobar or similar programs. It is designed to
       be very efficient by issuing a very small number of system calls, as one generally wants to update such a status line every second. This
       ensures that even under high load, your status bar is updated correctly. Also, it saves a bit of energy by not hogging your CPU as much as
       spawning the corresponding amount of shell commands would.

CONFIGURATION

       The basic idea of i3status is that you can specify which "modules" should be used (the order directive). You can then configure each module
       with its own section. For every module, you can specify the output format. See below for a complete reference.

       Sample configuration.

	   general {
		   output_format = "dzen2"
		   colors = true
		   interval = 5
	   }

	   order += "ipv6"
	   order += "disk /"
	   order += "run_watch DHCP"
	   order += "run_watch VPN"
	   order += "wireless wlan0"
	   order += "ethernet eth0"
	   order += "battery 0"
	   order += "cpu_temperature 0"
	   order += "load"
	   order += "time"

	   wireless wlan0 {
		   format_up = "W: (%quality at %essid, %bitrate) %ip"
		   format_down = "W: down"
	   }

	   ethernet eth0 {
		   # if you use %speed, i3status requires the cap_net_admin capability
		   format_up = "E: %ip (%speed)"
		   format_down = "E: down"
	   }

	   battery 0 {
		   format = "%status %percentage %remaining %emptytime"
		   path = "/sys/class/power_supply/BAT%d/uevent"
	   }

	   run_watch DHCP {
		   pidfile = "/var/run/dhclient*.pid"
	   }

	   run_watch VPN {
		   pidfile = "/var/run/vpnc/pid"
	   }

	   time {
		   format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
	   }

	   load {
		   format = "%5min"
	   }

	   cpu_temperature 0 {
		   format = "T: %degrees oC"
		   path = "/sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp1_input"
	   }

	   disk "/" {
		   format = "%free"
	   }

   General
       The colors directive will disable all colors if you set it to false. You can also specify the colors that will be used to display "good",
       "degraded" or "bad" values using the color_good, color_degraded or color_bad directives, respectively. Those directives are only used if
       color support is not disabled by the colors directive. The input format for color values is the canonical RGB hexadecimal triplet (with no
       separators between the colors), prefixed by a hash character ("#").

       Example configuration:

	   color_good = "#00FF00"

       Likewise, you can use the color_separator directive to specify the color that will be used to paint the separator bar. The separator is
       always output in color, even when colors are disabled by the colors directive.

       The interval directive specifies the time in seconds for which i3status will sleep before printing the next status line.

       Using output_format you can chose which format strings i3status should use in its output. Currently available are:

       i3bar
	   i3bar comes with i3 and provides a workspace bar which does the right thing in multi-monitor situations. It also comes with tray
	   support and can display the i3status output. This output type uses JSON to pass as much meta-information to i3bar as possible (like
	   colors, which blocks can be shortened in which way, etc.).

       dzen2
	   Dzen is a general purpose messaging, notification and menuing program for X11. It was designed to be scriptable in any language and
	   integrate well with window managers like dwm, wmii and xmonad though it will work with any windowmanger

       xmobar
	   xmobar is a minimalistic, text based, status bar. It was designed to work with the xmonad Window Manager.

       none
	   Does not use any color codes. Separates values by the pipe symbol. This should be used with i3bar and can be used for custom scripts.

   IPv6
       This module gets the IPv6 address used for outgoing connections (that is, the best available public IPv6 address on your computer).

       Example format_up: %ip

       Example format_down no IPv6

   Disk
       Gets used, free, available and total amount of bytes on the given mounted filesystem.

       Example order: disk /mnt/usbstick

       Example format: %free (%avail)/ %total

   Run-watch
       Expands the given path to a pidfile and checks if the process ID found inside is valid (that is, if the process is running). You can use
       this to check if a specific application, such as a VPN client or your DHCP client is running.

       Example order: run_watch DHCP

       Example format: %title: %status

   Wireless
       Gets the link quality and ESSID of the given wireless network interface. You can specify different format strings for the network being
       connected or not connected.

       Example order: wireless wlan0

       Example format: W: (%quality at %essid, %bitrate) %ip

   Ethernet
       Gets the IP address and (if possible) the link speed of the given ethernet interface. Getting the link speed requires the cap_net_admin
       capability. Set it using setcap cap_net_admin=ep $(which i3status).

       Example order: ethernet eth0

       Example format: E: %ip (%speed)

   Battery
       Gets the status (charging, discharging, running), percentage and remaining time of the given battery and when it's estimated to be empty.
       If you want to use the last full capacity instead of the design capacity (when using the design capacity, it may happen that your battery
       is at 23% when fully charged because it's old. In general, I want to see it this way, because it tells me how worn off my battery is.),
       just specify last_full_capacity = true.

       If your battery is represented in a non-standard path in /sys, be sure to modify the "path" property accordingly. The first occurence of %d
       gets replaced with the battery number, but you can just hard-code a path as well.

       Example order: battery 0

       Example format: %status %remaining (%emptytime)

   CPU-Temperature
       Gets the temperature of the given thermal zone.

       Example order: cpu_temperature 0

       Example format: T: %degrees oC

   CPU Usage
       Gets the percentual CPU usage from /proc/stat (Linux) or sysctl(3) (FreeBSD/OpenBSD).

       Example order: cpu_usage

       Example format: %usage

   Load
       Gets the system load (number of processes waiting for CPU time in the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes).

       Example order: load

       Example format: %1min %5min %15min

   Time
       Formats the current system time. See strftime(3) for the format.

       Example order: time

       Example format: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S

   DDate
       Outputs the current discordian date in user-specified format. See ddate(1) for details on the format string. Note: Neither %. nor %X are
       implemented yet.

       Example order: ddate

       Example format: %{%a, %b %d%}, %Y%N - %H

   Volume
       Outputs the volume of the specified mixer on the specified device. Works only on Linux because it uses ALSA. A simplified configuration can
       be used on FreeBSD and OpenBSD due to the lack of ALSA, the device, mixer and mixder_idx options can be ignored on these systems. On these
       systems the OSS API is used instead to query /dev/mixer directly.

       Example order: volume master

       Example format: : %volume

       Example configuration:

	   volume master {
		   format = ": %volume"
		   device = "default"
		   mixer = "Master"
		   mixer_idx = 0
	   }

USING I3STATUS WITH DZEN2
       After installing dzen2, you can directly use it with i3status. Just ensure that output_format is set to dzen2.

       Example for usage of i3status with dzen2:

	   i3status | dzen2 -fg white -ta r -w 1280 
	   -fn "-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-C-70-iso8859-1"

USING I3STATUS WITH XMOBAR
       To get xmobar to start, you might need to copy the default configuration file to ~/.xmobarrc. Also, ensure that the output_format option
       for i3status is set to xmobar.

       Example for usage of i3status with xmobar:

	   i3status | xmobar -o -t "%StdinReader%" -c "[Run StdinReader]"

WHAT ABOUT MEMORY USAGE OR CPU FREQUENCY
?
       While talking about two specific things, please understand this section as a general explanation why your favorite information is not
       included in i3status.

       Let's talk about memory usage specifically. It is hard to measure memory in a way which is accurate or meaningful. An in-depth
       understanding of how paging and virtual memory work in your operating system is required. Furthermore, even if we had a well-defined way of
       displaying memory usage and you would understand it, I think that it's not helpful to repeatedly monitor your memory usage. One reason for
       that is that I have not run out of memory in the last few years. Memory has become so cheap that even in my 4 year old notebook, I have 8
       GiB of RAM. Another reason is that your operating system will do the right thing anyway: Either you have not enough RAM for your workload,
       but you need to do it anyway, then your operating system will swap. Or you don't have enough RAM and you want to restrict your workload so
       that it fits, then the operating system will kill the process using too much RAM and you can act accordingly.

       For CPU frequency, the situation is similar. Many people don't understand how frequency scaling works precisely. The generally recommended
       CPU frequency governor ("ondemand") changes the CPU frequency far more often than i3status could display it. The display number is
       therefore often incorrect and doesn't tell you anything useful either.

       In general, i3status wants to display things which you would look at occasionally anyways, like the current date/time, whether you are
       connected to a WiFi network or not, and if you have enough disk space to fit that 4.3 GiB download.

       However, if you need to look at some kind of information more than once in a while (like checking repeatedly how full your RAM is), you are
       probably better off with a script doing that, which pops up an alert when your RAM usage reaches a certain threshold. After all, the point
       of computers is not to burden you with additional boring tasks like repeatedly checking a number.

EXTERNAL SCRIPTS
/PROGRAMS WITH I3STATUS
       In i3status, we don't want to implement process management again. Therefore, there is no module to run arbitrary scripts or commands.
       Instead, you should use your shell, for example like this:

       Example for prepending the i3status output:

	   #!/bin/sh
	   # shell script to prepend i3status with more stuff

	   i3status | while :
	   do
		   read line
		   echo "mystuff | $line" || exit 1
	   done

       Put that in some script, say .bin/my_i3status.sh and execute that instead of i3status.

SEE ALSO

       strftime(3), date(1), glob(3), dzen2(1), xmobar(1)

AUTHORS

       Michael Stapelberg and contributors

       Thorsten Toepper

       Baptiste Daroussin

       Axel Wagner

       Fernando Tarla Cardoso Lemos

i3status v2.5							    05/11/2012							       I3STATUS(1)