Is there an API to determine when computer is sleeping?

km4hr · 04-27-2008, 09:02 PM

I want to write a C program that runs in the background and records the amount of time that my computer is sleeping, that is, not being used. By "sleeping" I mean when the monitor goes black and waiting for user input to wake up. Is there a programming API/routine that can be used to determine when the computer is sleeping? (I want to write the program in C because it's the only language I know.) Is there a another way?

paulsm4 · 04-27-2008, 11:59 PM

There's a standard protocol that *enables* your computer to hibernate - ACPI.

You need to determine which combination for ACPI-compliant hardware and software your PC and distro support, and then go from there to see what kinds of statistics you can collect.

My guess is that your system is very likely to support ACPI out of the box, and you're likely to find promising statistics in your /proc filesystem.

Anyway, here are a couple of links to get you started in the right direction:

http://www.linux.com/articles/54610
http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/...anagement.html

'Hope that helps .. PSM