Enable/disable sleepd
sleeptcl [on|off|status]
sleepctl allows temporarily disabling of the sleepd(8) daemon, by a regular user. This can be useful when you're in the middle of a long download or compile, and don't want the system going to sleep in the middle.
"sleepctl off" makes sleepd not put the system to sleep even if it thinks it is idle. If this command is run more than once, the requests stack up, and a like number of "sleepctl on" commands must be run to re-enable sleeping. This may be useful if multiple automated processes or users use the command. Note that the system may still be put to sleep for other reasons, such as a failing battery.
"sleepctl on" re-enables sleeping. If sleeping is re-enabled and sleepd has seen no system activity for some time, and has been prevented from putting the system to sleep, it may put the system to sleep immediatly.
"sleepctl status" outputs the current status of sleepd.
Note that if the system is forced to sleep by other means, sleepd will not remember what mode it was in when it wakes back up, and will return to the default mode of putting the system to sleep after some amount of inactivity. This is by design, so you may easily and naturally undo the effects of a "sleepctl off" without remembering to turn it back on.
This program communicates with sleepd by writing to the file /var/run/sleepd.ctl. As such, it needs read/write access to that file. It also needs to run as whatever user sleepd runs as, so it can hup the daemon.
sleepctl off ; wget http://foo/huge.tgz ; sleepctl on
http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/sleepd/
Joey Hess <[email protected]>