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 1.14.10                     01/05/2024                   DBUS-MONITOR(1)