NAME

       dbus-monitor - debug probe to print message bus messages

SYNOPSIS

       dbus-monitor [--system | --session | --address ADDRESS] [--profile | --monitor | --pcap |
                    --binary] [watch expressions]

DESCRIPTION

       The dbus-monitor command is used to monitor messages going through a D-Bus message bus.
       See http://www.freedesktop.org/software/dbus/ for more information about the big picture.

       There are two well-known message buses: the systemwide message bus (installed on many
       systems as the "messagebus" service) and the per-user-login-session message bus (started
       each time a user logs in). The --system and --session options direct dbus-monitor to
       monitor the system or session buses respectively. If neither is specified, dbus-monitor
       monitors the session bus.

       dbus-monitor has two different text output modes: the 'classic'-style monitoring mode, and
       profiling mode. The profiling format is a compact format with a single line per message
       and microsecond-resolution timing information. The --profile and --monitor options select
       the profiling and monitoring output format respectively.

       dbus-monitor also has two binary output modes. The binary mode, selected by --binary,
       outputs the entire binary message stream (without the initial authentication handshake).
       The PCAP mode, selected by --pcap, adds a PCAP file header to the beginning of the output,
       and prepends a PCAP message header to each message; this produces a binary file that can
       be read by, for instance, Wireshark.

       If no mode is specified, dbus-monitor uses the monitoring output format.

       In order to get dbus-monitor to see the messages you are interested in, you should specify
       a set of watch expressions as you would expect to be passed to the dbus_bus_add_match
       function.

       The message bus configuration may keep dbus-monitor from seeing all messages, especially
       if you run the monitor as a non-root user.

OPTIONS

       --system
           Monitor the system message bus.

       --session
           Monitor the session message bus. (This is the default.)

       --address ADDRESS
           Monitor an arbitrary message bus given at ADDRESS.

       --profile
           Use the profiling output format.

       --monitor
           Use the monitoring output format. (This is the default.)

EXAMPLE

       Here is an example of using dbus-monitor to watch for the gnome typing monitor to say
       things

             dbus-monitor "type='signal',sender='org.gnome.TypingMonitor',interface='org.gnome.TypingMonitor'"

AUTHOR

       dbus-monitor was written by Philip Blundell. The profiling output mode was added by Olli
       Salli.

BUGS

       Please send bug reports to the D-Bus mailing list or bug tracker, see
       http://www.freedesktop.org/software/dbus/