The K Desktop Environment

Command line operation

When command line parameters are supplied, KAlarm does not display the list of scheduled alarms as described in Graphical mode above. Command line options specific to KAlarm may be used to perform the following operations:

  • schedule a new alarm message

  • control the alarm daemon

Additional command line options are provided primarily to enable other programs to interface to KAlarm. They are described in the chapter Developer's Guide to KAlarm.

The command line must only contain options applicable to one KAlarm operation. If you want to perform multiple operations, you must invoke KAlarm multiple times with a single set of options each time.

Schedule a new alarm message

The following options are used to schedule an alarm message for display by KAlarm:

Option Description
-b, --beep Make an audible beep when the message is displayed.
-c, --color, --colour colour Set the message background colour to the specified QT colour name or hex code 0xRRGGBB.
-i, --interval minutes Set the interval between repetitions of the alarm to the specified number of minutes. Mandatory if --repeat is specified.
-l, --late-cancel Cancel the message if it cannot be displayed at the correct time.
-r, --repeat minutes The number of times the alarm should be repeated, after its initial display. Mandatory if --interval is specified.
-t, --time time Display message at 'time' [[[yyyy-]mm-]dd-]hh:mm (default is immediately).
message Message text to display.

A message text must be specified; except as noted, all the options are optional.

Two alternative examples which display a multi-line message with a red background at 10 p.m. on the 27th of this month are:

% kalarm -c red -t 27-22:00 "Remember to\nSTOP"
% kalarm -c 0xFF0000 -t 27-22:00 "Remember to\nSTOP"

Control the alarm daemon

The following options are used to reset or halt the alarm daemon.

See the Alarm daemon section for a discussion about resetting and stopping the alarm daemon.

Option Description
--reset Reset the alarm daemon.
--stop Stop the alarm daemon.

The following command will reset the alarm daemon.

% kalarm --reset

The following command will halt the alarm daemon.

% kalarm --stop

Help options

The following help options are common to all KDE programs:

Option Description
--help Shows a brief options help text.
--help-qt Shows numerous generic Qt-specific options.
--help-kde Shows numerous generic KDE-specific options.
--help-all Shows all options.
--author Shows the names and email addresses of KAlarm authors.
-v, --version Shows the running versions of the Qt library , KDE and KAlarm.
--license Show licence information.