<html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/27/2012 1:36 AM, Jonathan Marsden wrote: </div> <blockquote cite="mid:508B72D0.7000303@fastmail.fm" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">John, On 10/26/2012 04:52 PM, John Hupp wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">The only problem is that it only posts warning messages to the wall command, which outputs only to console sessions. ... </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> In my experience, apcupsd is a *lot* more configurable than that -- did you read its documentation or its scripts before posting? You can create scripts for each class of event (onbattery, offbattery, etc.) handled by /etc/apcupsd/apccontrol that do *whatever* you want them to do -- turn the message into audio and speak it using a speech synth, if you really want :) You don't even need to edit /etc/apcupsd/apccontrol to do this, it will notice that your custom scripts exist, and use them instead of its internal default actions. Jonathan </pre> </blockquote> [Newbie sent scurrying to dig into the "Customizing Event Handling" section of the apcupsd manual, and for some general research on desktop notification methods.] OK, I found out that notify-send is a common desktop notification tool, and that one installs the libnotify-bin package to get it. I did so. I have now also created the shell script /etc/apcupsd/annoyme. It is owned by root. I used the Properties: Permissions sheet to give everyone Read & Write permission, and marked it executable. The contents of annoyme: #!/bin/sh notify-send -u critical -t 5000 "The computer is running on battery." "It will shut down shortly. Please save your work and log off." exit 0 Running this script manually pops up a nice warning on the desktop for 5 seconds. But when I pull the plug for a UPS test, I do not get any desktop warnings, though apcupsd powers down the PC when expected. But if I log into a console during that time, I see the default onbattery and annoyme wall messages. As I understand it, apccontrol should run my custom annoyme script before running its own default annoyme command. I have not modified apccontrol. Anyone recognize what the problem is? -------------------------- I could add parameters from my current configured-for-testing apcupsd.conf: UPSCABLE usb UPSTYPE usb DEVICE LOCKFILE /var/lock SCRIPTDIR /etc/apcupsd PWRFAILDIR /etc/apcupsd NOLOGINDIR /etc ONBATTERYDELAY 6 BATTERYLEVEL 5 MINUTES 3 TIMEOUT 60 ANNOY 10 ANNOYDELAY 20 NOLOGON always KILLDELAY 0 NETSERVER on NISIP 0.0.0.0 NISPORT 3551 EVENTSFILE /var/log/apcupsd.events EVENTSFILEMAX 10 UPSCLASS standalone UPSMODE disable STATTIME 0 STATFILE /var/log/apcupsd.status LOGSTATS off DATATIME 0 </body> </html>