DBUS-MONITOR(1) User Commands DBUS-MONITOR(1)
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/
D-Bus 1.14.4 DBUS-MONITOR(1)