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  From: Skip Montanaro <skip@mojam.com>
  To  : <apmd-list@worldvisions.ca>
  Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 14:06:23 -0600

How to get started using apmd?

I just subscribed to this list.  I didn't see anything like a "getting
started" or "INSTALL" file in the apmd distribution, nor is the man page
chock full of examples and the mailing list discussion seems to be a bit
lower-level than elementary usage questions.  My apologies for the rather
naive questions that follow.  I suspect I'll get the hang of it fairly soon,
but need a gentle shove in the right direction.

Here's my setup.  I have a Dell Inspiron 7500 running Mandrake Linux 6.1.  I
purchased and installed Accelerated X from Xi Graphics.  When I close the
cover or the APM timeouts set in the BIOS are triggered, the machine very
nicely starts to snore.  Unfortunately, when it reawakens later, the mouse
generally doesn't respond and I have to CTL-ALT-BS my way out of X.  This is
obviously a pain because I lose the state of whatever I was working on.
(Also, kwm seems to be very unforgiving of being exited in this fashion.)

I sort of assume that apmd is somehow my knight in shining armor.  Mandrake
6.1 came with 2.4 installed, though I'm not currently using it.  In the
Accelerated X release notes they say

    An apm daemon has been provided with the Full installation.  This is a
    modified version of the normal apm daemon.  Source code and binary are
    available from the Anon-FTP site at ftp://ftp.xig.com/pub/misc/apm.

There is so much different between 2.4 and 3.0 that I can't diff the two
reliably to see just what enhancements XiG made to the code and they didn't
describe what they did.  Does anyone know if the 3.0 release subsumes
whatever changes XiG made to apmd 2.4 or will I have to dredge up a stock
2.4 version somewhere (where would that be) and diff it with XiG's code?

Finally, what is necessary to actually use apmd?  Is it sufficient to simply
enable the daemon at startup with no arguments or are there magic
incantations I must give to it to get it to do appropriate things when
various events occur?  /etc/rc.d/init.d/apmd as delivered with the Mandrake
distribution simply executes

    daemon apmd

when asked to start the daemon.  

Thanks for listening.

-- 
Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip@mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/