busctl(1)

Print a short version string and exit.

.RE

.SH "PARAMETER FORMATTING"

.PP The call and set-property commands take a signature string followed by a list of parameters formatted as string (for details on D-Bus signature strings, see the Type system chapter of the D-Bus specification[2]). For simple types, each parameter following the signature should simply be the parameter's value formatted as string. Positive boolean values may be formatted as true, yes, on, or 1; negative boolean values may be specified as false, no, off, or 0. For arrays, a numeric argument for the number of entries followed by the entries shall be specified. For variants, the signature of the contents shall be specified, followed by the contents. For dictionaries and structs, the contents of them shall be directly specified.

.PP For example,

s jawoll

is the formatting of a single string jawoll.

.PP

as 3 hello world foobar

is the formatting of a string array with three entries, hello, world and foobar.

.PP

a{sv} 3 One s Eins Two u 2 Yes b true

is the formatting of a dictionary array that maps strings to variants, consisting of three entries. The string One is assigned the string Eins. The string Two is assigned the 32-bit unsigned integer 2. The string Yes is assigned a positive boolean.

.PP Note that the call, get-property, introspect commands will also generate output in this format for the returned data. Since this format is sometimes too terse to be easily understood, the call and get-property commands may generate a more verbose, multi-line output when passed the --verbose option.

.SH "EXAMPLES"

.PP Example 1. Write and Read a Property

.PP The following two commands first write a property and then read it back. The property is found on the /org/freedesktop/systemd1 object of the org.freedesktop.systemd1 service. The name of the property is LogLevel on the org.freedesktop.systemd1.Manager interface. The property contains a single string:

# busctl set-property org.freedesktop.systemd1 /org/freedesktop/systemd1 org.freedesktop.systemd1.Manager LogLevel s debug
# busctl get-property org.freedesktop.systemd1 /org/freedesktop/systemd1 org.freedesktop.systemd1.Manager LogLevel
s "debug"

.PP Example 2. Terse and Verbose Output

.PP The following two commands read a property that contains an array of strings, and first show it in terse format, followed by verbose format:

$ busctl get-property org.freedesktop.systemd1 /org/freedesktop/systemd1 org.freedesktop.systemd1.Manager Environment
as 2 "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" "PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin"
$ busctl get-property --verbose org.freedesktop.systemd1 /org/freedesktop/systemd1 org.freedesktop.systemd1.Manager Environment
ARRAY "s" {


        STRING "LANG=en_US.UTF-8";


        STRING "PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin";
};

.PP Example 3. Invoking a Method

.PP The following command invokes the StartUnit method on the org.freedesktop.systemd1.Manager interface of the /org/freedesktop/systemd1 object of the org.freedesktop.systemd1 service, and passes it two strings cups.service and replace. As a result of the method call, a single object path parameter is received and shown:

# busctl call org.freedesktop.systemd1 /org/freedesktop/systemd1 org.freedesktop.systemd1.Manager StartUnit ss "cups.service" "replace"
o "/org/freedesktop/systemd1/job/42684"

.SH "SEE ALSO"

.PP dbus-daemon(1), D-Bus[3], sd-bus(3), varlinkctl(1), systemd(1), machinectl(1), wireshark(1)