Ubuntu Manpage: i3status - Generates a status line for i3bar, dzen2 or xmobar

NAME

       i3status - Generates a status line for i3bar, 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 VPNC"
order += "path_exists VPN"
order += "wireless wlan0"
order += "ethernet eth0"
order += "battery 0"
order += "cpu_temperature 0"
order += "load"
order += "tztime local"
order += "tztime berlin"

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"
format_down = "No battery"
path = "/sys/class/power_supply/BAT%d/uevent"
low_threshold = 10
}

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

run_watch VPNC {
# file containing the PID of a vpnc process
pidfile = "/var/run/vpnc/pid"
}

path_exists VPN {
# path exists when a VPN tunnel launched by nmcli/nm-applet is active
path = "/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/tun0"
}

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

tztime berlin {
format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z"
timezone = "Europe/Berlin"
}

load {
format = "%5min"
}

cpu_temperature 0 {
format = "T: %degrees °C"
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.

term
Use ANSI Escape sequences to produce a terminal-output as close as possible to the graphical outputs.
This makes debugging your config file a little bit easier because the terminal-output of i3status
becomes much more readable, but should only used for such quick glances, because it will only support
very basic output-features (for example you only get 3 bits of color depth).

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.

It’s also possible to use the color_good, color_degraded, color_bad directives to define specific colors
per module. If one of these directives is defined in a module section its value will override the value
defined in the general section just for this module.

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.

These values can also be expressed in percentages with the percentage_used, percentage_free,
percentage_avail and percentage_used_of_avail formats.

Byte sizes are presented in a human readable format using a set of prefixes whose type can be specified
via the "prefix_type" option. Three sets of prefixes are available:

binary
IEC prefixes (Ki, Mi, Gi, Ti) represent multiples of powers of 1024. This is the default.

decimal
SI prefixes (k, M, G, T) represent multiples of powers of 1000.

custom
The custom prefixes (K, M, G, T) represent multiples of powers of 1024.

Example order: disk /mnt/usbstick

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

Example format: %percentage_used used, %percentage_free free, %percentage_avail avail

Example prefix_type: custom

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

Path-exists
Checks if the given path exists in the filesystem. You can use this to check if something is active, like
for example a VPN tunnel managed by NetworkManager.

Example order: path_exists VPN

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, remaining time and power consumption (in
Watts) 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 you want the battery percentage to be shown without decimals, add integer_battery_capacity = true.

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

It is possible to define a low_threshold that causes the battery text to be colored red. The
low_threshold type can be of threshold_type "time" or "percentage". So, if you configure low_threshold to
10 and threshold_type to "time", and your battery lasts another 9 minutes, it will be colored red.

Example order: battery 0

Example format: %status %remaining (%emptytime %consumption)

Example low_threshold: 30

Example threshold_type: time

Example path: /sys/class/power_supply/CMB1/uevent

CPU-Temperature
Gets the temperature of the given thermal zone. It is possible to define a max_threshold that will color
the temperature red in case the specified thermal zone is getting too hot. Defaults to 75 degrees C.

Example order: cpu_temperature 0

Example format: T: %degrees °C

Example max_threshold: 42

Example path: /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/temp1_input

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). It is
possible to define a max_threshold that will color the load value red in case the load average of the
last minute is getting higher than the configured threshold. Defaults to 5.

Example order: load

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

Example max_threshold: "0,1"

Time
Outputs the current time in the local timezone. To use a different timezone, you can set the TZ
environment variable, or use the tztime module. See strftime(3) for details on the format string.

Example order: time

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

TzTime
Outputs the current time in the given timezone. If no timezone is given, local time will be used. See
strftime(3) for details on the format string. The system’s timezone database is usually installed in
/usr/share/zoneinfo. Files below that path make for valid timezone strings, e.g. for
/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin you can set timezone to Europe/Berlin in the tztime module.

Example order: tztime berlin

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

Example timezone: Europe/Berlin

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
and mixer options can be ignored on these systems. On these systems the OSS API is used instead to query
/dev/mixer directly if mixer_dix is -1, otherwise /dev/mixer+mixer_idx+.

Example order: volume master

Example format: ♪: %volume Example format_muted: ♪: 0%%

Example configuration:

volume master {
format = "♪: %volume"
format_muted = "♪: muted (%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.

       Note that if you want to use the JSON output format (with colors in i3bar), you need to use a slightly
       more complex wrapper script. There are examples in the contrib/ folder, see
       http://code.i3wm.org/i3status/tree/contrib

SIGNALS

       When receiving SIGUSR1, i3status’s nanosleep() will be interrupted and thus you will force an update. You
       can use killall -USR1 i3status to force an update after changing the system volume, for example.

AUTHORS

       Michael Stapelberg and contributors

       Thorsten Toepper

       Baptiste Daroussin

       Axel Wagner

       Fernando Tarlá Cardoso Lemos