On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 08:55:03PM -0500, Tom Metro wrote:
> Kevin D. Clark wrote:
> > I used to use a program called "contool"
> > that did exactly what you describe.
> >   http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/contool
> 
>    It is a replacement for the standard X console.  Contool will flash
>    its icon and beep when messages are written to the icon, so you can
>    keep it closed on your desktop until a message arrives.
> 
> "Standard X console?" I didn't know there was such a thing. Are they 
> referring to an xterm?

No, they're referring to xconsole, and old Athena widget application
for capturing messages sent to the console.  On older X windows
installations I've used, xconsole was launched automatically and
displayed along with the chooser/login boxes (depending on how your
stuff was configured).  In olden times I would launch it manually to
see messages which would normally be logged on the console, but I
haven't used it nor seen anyone else use it for years.

> Thanks for the pointer. This approach many have an advantage over
> the approach I was considering in that it sounds like it'll display
> anything written to the traditional system console, which would
> catch more than just what syslog might write.

Likely the other way around.  I'm not aware of anything that logs
messages to the system console without using syslog to do it... 
 
> But the end result would be less modern in appearance and less 
> integrated with the desktop than using libnotify (which generates little 
> pop-up messages in the corner of the screen).

HP Openview does what (I think) you want...  Though it's very
expensive and a beast to set up.  I'm quite sure I've seen at least
one GUI application that does the same thing (and I'm not talking
about the network node monitoring stuff... I'm talking about the
syslog monitoring stuff) but it was several years ago and
unfortunately I don't remember what it was.  Have you tried searching
freshmeat for something like "log monitor"?

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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