The alarm daemon, kalarmd, monitors KAlarm's calendar file for alarms becoming due. When it determines that an alarm is due, it tells KAlarm to display it, or to cancel it if it is late and late display was not selected for that alarm message.
The alarm daemon may also be used by other applications.
The alarm daemon runs as a KDE panel application. It may be controlled via its menu which is accessed by right-clicking on its icon in the KDE panel.
You can activate KAlarm by left-clicking on the alarm daemon icon in the KDE panel, provided either that KAlarm is the only application which uses the daemon, or that KAlarm is selected for activation in the alarm daemon's menu.
Toggles alarms enabled / disabled.
When alarms are enabled, the calendar files marked in the menu as selected will be monitored for alarms becoming due. When alarms are not enabled, no alarm monitoring is performed, and KAlarm will not display any alarms.
Toggles on / off automatically running the alarm daemon at login.
When auto start is enabled, the alarm daemon will automatically run whenever you log on. This is the normal mode which ensures that alarms are monitored. If you want to disable alarm monitoring after you next log off, deselect this option; the alarm daemon will no longer be started at login.
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Whenever the alarm daemon is started up, whether by KAlarm or any other application which uses the daemon or by other means, auto start is re-enabled. The facility to disable auto start is provided primarily to allow you to disable the alarm daemon if you do not expect to use KAlarm or any other client applications for a while. |
Selects the application to be activated when the panel icon is left-clicked.
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There is one menu entry for each application registered with the alarm daemon. If KAlarm is the only application registered with the alarm daemon, this menu option will not appear, and KAlarm will be activated whenever the icon is left-clicked. |
Toggles the calendar file enabled / disabled.
When the given calendar file is enabled, it will be monitored for alarms becoming due. When it is not enabled, no alarm monitoring is performed for that calendar file, and KAlarm will not display any alarms from it.
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There is one menu entry for each calendar file being monitored by the alarm daemon. KAlarm always uses a single calendar file. Any additional calendar files shown in the menu will belong to other applications which are registered with the alarm daemon. |
No further alarm monitoring will be performed, and KAlarm will not display any alarms, until the alarm daemon is restarted.
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Quitting will also affect the functioning of any other applications which use the alarm daemon. |
The alarm daemon is normally started at KDE session login (unless you use the context menu to disable auto start), and runs continuously until logout. If for any reason it is not running, alarm monitoring will not occur and KAlarm will not display any alarms.
To start the alarm daemon, you can either run KAlarm in its default graphical mode (i.e. without any command line parameters), reset the daemon as described below, or you can run the alarm daemon directly from the command line:
% kalarmd
It is also possible to reset the alarm daemon without stopping it. Resetting causes the alarm daemon to re-read the list of scheduled messages from the calendar file and re-initialise its KAlarm-related data.
Why might you want to reset the alarm daemon? It isn't a very likely occurrence, but if for any reason KAlarm was not able to run when the alarm daemon told it to output a message, that message will never be output until the alarm daemon is either reset or restarted. Resetting is preferable to stopping the alarm daemon and restarting it, since resetting the daemon will not affect any other applications which use the alarm daemon.
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Resetting starts the alarm daemon if it is not currently running. |
To reset the alarm daemon, either use the menu command Actions->Reset Daemon (Ctrl-R) , or type the following command:
% kalarm --reset
Stopping the alarm daemon will prevent any further monitoring of scheduled alarm messages until the daemon is restarted.
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Stopping it will affect the functioning of any other applications which also use the alarm daemon. Consider resetting the daemon instead. |
To stop the alarm daemon, either use the alarm daemon's Quit menu option, or type the following command:
% kalarm --stop