Using xmessage [Was: Re: Software to monitor domains]

[Erik Christiansen]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 06:17:48AM -0800, Ray Parrish wrote:
> I have modified the script to close to what you have there now.

Just in case it's [useful | appealing], xmessage takes the common
colour and geometry options, allowing:

xmessage -nearmouse -bg red -fg yellow 'Please notice this now!'

xmessage -geometry +10+10 -bg orange 'This is less serious'

I didn't know about xmessage. For many years, I'd just used e.g. this
crontab:

57 18 * * * xterm -T "ABC News" -geometry 44x1+300+300 -bg red -display :0.0

If you try using cron to schedule the monitoring, as Derek suggested,
you may also need to use the display option.

Although the above options don't appear on the xmessage manpage, they'll
be in the X manpages somewhere. My 7.10 ubuntu doesn't have "X(7)", and 

$ apt-cache search xman | more     # shows:

xmanpages-ja - Japanese manual pages for X

but English pages elude me at the moment.

Erik

-- 
C hasn't changed much since the 1970s. And let's face it it's ugly.
Can't we do better? C++? (Sorry, never mind.)      - Rob Pike