Many applications can run a program when an event occurs. Use XOSD to make these alerts really grab your attention.
Many of the applications you use daily might give you the option of executing a program when an event occurs. The KMail email client, Jpilot personal information manager, and Swatch log-monitor program are three examples. Each hack in this section takes advantage of XOSD [Hack #26] .
If you use the KDE KMail email client, you can have KMail execute a program when new mail arrives. Here's how you can have KMail display the on-screen new-mail notification "You've got mail!" with XOSD.
First, you need to create a script that displays the on-screen alert "You've got mail!". KMail doesn't allow you to insert the entire echo and osd_cat command line, but it will execute a script that displays the message. Fire up your favorite editor, and enter this script into a file called ~/youhavemail. (This script executes from your home directory, so you don't need any special privileges for it to work.)
#!/bin/bash # figure out which display we're currently using # then export the DISPLAY environment variable HOST="$(xrdb -symbols | grep SERVERHOST | cut -d= -f2)" DISPLAYNUM="$(xrdb -symbols | grep DISPLAY_NUM | cut -d= -f2)" THISDISPLAY=$HOST:$DISPLAYNUM.0 export DISPLAY=$THISDISPLAY echo "You've got mail"'!' | osd_cat -s 2 -c yellow -p middle -f -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-*-240-*-*-p-*-*-* -d 30
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Save your work and change the script to be executable:
$ chmod +x ~/youhavemail
Now follow these steps to configure KMail to execute the script when new mail arrives:
Start up KMail and then click Settings
Click the button entitled Other Actions at the bottom of the dialog, located right below the Detailed New Mail Notification box, which should be checked by default.
Click the More Options button at the bottom of the next dialog box that appears.
Check the "Execute a program" box.
Enter ~/youhavemail in the edit field for this selection.
Click the Apply and/or OK buttons until you are back to the KMail interface.
You can configure the Jpilot personal information manager (PIM) to run a script that displays an on-screen message when a scheduled event occurs. Fire up your favorite editor, and enter this script into a file called ~/jpilotalert. (This script executes from your home directory, so you don't need any special privileges for it to work.)
#!/bin/bash # figure out which display we're currently using # then export the DISPLAY environment variable HOST="$(xrdb -symbols | grep SERVERHOST | cut -d= -f2)" DISPLAYNUM="$(xrdb -symbols | grep DISPLAY_NUM | cut -d= -f2)" THISDISPLAY=$HOST:$DISPLAYNUM.0 export DISPLAY=$THISDISPLAY echo "You have an appointment scheduled for $1 $2"'!' | osd_cat -s 2 -c yellow -p middle -f -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-*-240-*-*-p-*-*-* -d 30
Here is how to set up Jpilot to execute this script and enter the date and time as part of the alert:
Select File
Click the Alarms tab.
Check the box labeled "Execute this command."
Enter the following string of text into the Alarm Command text field: ~/jpilotalert "%d" "%t".
Swatch is a program that monitors your system logs to watch for certain important keywords in one or more log files. If Swatch finds a keyword, perhaps a word or pattern that indicates someone might be trying to guess passwords and break into your network, Swatch will do whatever you tell it to do to issue the alert.
Normally, when Swatch issues an alert, it simply prints it to the screen where Swatch is running. Swatch can also send you an email alert, but if Swatch detected an attempted break-in, your network could be compromised by the time you check your email. This hack exploits the power of XOSD to give Swatch a better chance of grabbing your attention when something potentially serious is afoot.
Here is an example of how to set up Swatch to tell you when someone tries to log in, but fails (a possible indication that someone is trying to guess a password). Assume that the Swatch configuration file you are using is /root/.swatchrc, and the log file to be monitored is /var/log/auth.log, which, for some Linux distributions, is the file that records all login attempts. Here is just one section of a larger file called /root/.swatchrc, which looks for the word "failure" in /var/log/auth.log:
# Bad login attempts watchfor /failure/ pipe "osd_cat -c magenta -p middle -f \"-*-arial black-*-*-*-*-48-*-*-*-*-*-*-*\" -d 60"
When Swatch finds a new log entry with the word "failure" in /var/log/auth.log, it prints the suspicious log entry on-screen by piping it through osd_cat, which makes the event almost impossible to miss if you're working at the computer. Note that we're using a smaller font than we used for the previous hacks. That's because Swatch messages can sometimes be lengthy, and you don't want to have the most important information hidden off-screen.