michael orlitzky

xfce4-hdaps

Update 2026-02-24
I switched to wayland on my thinkpad due to the worsening performance of webkit-gtk under X. At the time, XFCE did not support wayland, so tl;dr I am no longer using XFCE. I will try to keep this working, but it is lightly doomed and will not be getting a port to the next version of XFCE/GTK unless someone else takes over.

get it

Release
xfce4-hdaps-1.0.3.tar.xz
Browse source
gitweb, codeberg
Clone it
git clone https://gitweb.michael.orlitzky.com/xfce4-hdaps.git

xfce4-hdaps is included in Gentoo linux, and Fedora packages are usually available in the cheese repository.

what is it?

A plugin to indicate the status of the IBM Hard Drive Active Protection System, or HDAPS.

requirements

  1. The hdaps kernel module from the tp_smapi project.
  2. A running hdaps daemon, at least if you'd like the plugin to do anything. The daemon is what updates sysfs with the readings from the hdaps module.

installation

I think it builds like most XFCE panel plugins. Git users, run ./autogen.sh in the project directory to bootstrap autotools. Afterwards, it's an autotools project that installs like any other, e.g.

user $ ./configure

user $ make

user $ make install

settings

Poll Frequency
This is the frequency with which the plugin checks the status of HDAPS. If you set it to 500ms (the default), it will check every half second and update the icon according to what it finds.
Device Name
The name of the device whose HDAPS status you wish to monitor. This will almost certainly be a hard drive, and will most likely be sda. With any luck, the plugin will auto-detect the supported devices on your system. If you have more than one supported device, you will need to select it on the configuration dialog.

how to report bugs

Email them to me at michael@orlitzky.com, or report them on Codeberg.