i3status(1)
===========
Michael Stapelberg <michael+i3@stapelberg.de>
-v2.3, July 2011
+v2.4, December 2011
== NAME
interval = 5
}
-order = "ipv6"
+order += "ipv6"
order += "disk /"
order += "run_watch DHCP"
order += "run_watch VPN"
}
battery 0 {
- format = "%status %percentage %remaining"
+ format = "%status %percentage %remaining %emptytime"
+ path = "/sys/class/power_supply/BAT%d/uevent"
}
run_watch DHCP {
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
*Example order*: +run_watch DHCP+
+*Example format*: +%title: %status+
+
=== Wireless
Gets the link quality and ESSID of the given wireless network interface. You
=== Battery
Gets the status (charging, discharging, running), percentage and remaining
-time of the given battery. 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+.
+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+
+*Example format*: +%status %remaining (%emptytime)+
=== CPU-Temperature
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 often look at
+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
+of with a script doing that, which pops up an alert when your RAM usage reaches
+a certain threshold.
+
== External scripts/programs with i3status
In i3status, we don’t want to implement process management again. Therefore,
*Example for prepending the i3status output*:
--------------------------------------------------------------
+#!/bin/sh
+# shell script to prepend i3status with more stuff
+
i3status | while :
do
read line
- echo "mystuff | $line"
-done | i3bar -d
+ 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)+
projects / i3 / i3status / blobdiff