Making a Status Bar

WARNING! this page is outdated! How to get a status bar, instead of the default "awesome ver# / name".

First, create a file with the name awesome-status and place it where you want to, this will be used to output the information we want to the awesome client.

Next, copy "awesome-client" to /usr/local/bin. If you can't find it, enter the following in a terminal: $ updatedb $ locate awesome-client (Note: If you do not have an awesome-client you will have to compile it from source!)

So, now we have "awesome-client" residing in /usr/local/bin. Next, we need to make awesome-status executable. $ chmod a+x /path/to/awesome-status

Now add /path/to/awesome-status | /usr/local/bin/awesome-client & to ~/.xinitrc before "exec awesome".

All that remains is to place items into the status bar. Below is a possible format of "awesome-status", as well as a few examples of what to place in it.

delim=" | "; printStatusInfo {	    /bin/echo "0 setstatustext ${item1}TEXT${delim}${item2}TEXT${delim}"; # if you do not use xinerama, the next 3 lines are obsolete if [ "x$XINERAMA" = "xYES" ]; then /bin/echo "1 setstatustext ${item1}TEXT${delim}${item2}TEXT${delim}"; fi } while true; do    printStatusInfo sleep 5; done
 * 1) !/bin/bash
 * 1) close printStatusInfo

Here are a few examples of what to put in place of "item1", "item2", etc.

Date and time: ctime=`date '+%a, %d %b %H:%M'`; With this, "awesome-status" would now be modified such:

delim=" | "; printStatusInfo {	    ctime=`date '+%a, %d %b %H:%M'`; /bin/echo "0 setstatustext Today's date and the current time: ${ctime}${delim}${item2}text${delim}"; # if you do not use xinerama, the next 3 lines are obsolete if [ "x$XINERAMA" = "xYES" ]; then /bin/echo "1 setstatustext Today's date and the current time: ${ctime}${delim}${item2}text${delim}"; fi }#close printStatusInfo while true; do    printStatusInfo | /usr/local/bin/awesome-client sleep 5; done
 * 1) !/bin/bash