- battery status or suspends the computer
apmsleep(1): suspends the machine for a limited time
xapm(1x): provides a battery meter for X11
libapm.a: a library for writing APM applications
Some APM firmware fails to restore mixer settings properly which can result in squeals of feedback in the music after the machine has resumed. A solution is to set up the proxy script so that it calls a mixer application after resume.
From the apmsleep(1) man page: Some computers, especially laptops, can wake up from a low-power suspend to DRAM mode using the Real-time clock (RTC) chip. Apmsleep can be used to set the alarm time in the RTC and to go into suspend or standby mode. An interrupt from the RTC causes the computer to wake-up. The program detects this event, by waiting for a leap in the kernel time and terminates successfully. If no time leap occurs within one minute, or something goes wrong, the exit value will be non-zero. Apmsleep is part of the apmd package.
In 2001 Richard Gooch wrote a simple apmd alternative which is available in the pmutils package.
Also, take a look at apmcd (apm based crontab) at ftp://ftp.binary9.net/pub/linux/ . This tool was written by Nicolas J. Leon <nicholas_AT_binary9.net>.
