[H-GEN] comsat/biff question (fwd)

Christopher Biggs chris at stallion.oz.au
Tue Aug 18 17:36:04 EDT 1998


Michael Anthon <anthonm at tams.com.au> moved upon the face of the 'Net and spake thusly:

> Actually, this is something I have been kinda thinking about trying to
> implement, although for a different reason.  Basically, I was hoping to
> have a cron job scan any/all log files that I wish to monitor for
> certain events (eg failed logins and such) 

Why not have syslogd(8) (in addition to normal logging) write all
interesting messages to a pseudo-tty which is controlled by your
notification dispatcher.  This program then receives the events in
real time and does what it likes, with no need to watch multiple files.

> So I was kinda hoping there was some program that I could call in a
> script that will open a dialog box on a particular display.... anyone
> know of such a beastie?

The wee tools that are used in the Linux kernel config process?
There's the text "dialog" tools, and ISTR the X equivalent uses the Tk
widgets for the fancy equivalent.  If you write your event handler in
Perl or Tcl you get X (via Tk) for free (cue python bigot!).

> The other alternative is to use samba to send a winpopup message (I
> really wish it was possible to hide that awful bloody thing)

Eeew. Gross.   Wash your mind out with soap this minute, young man!

> 
> [0] Is putting a complete sentence or two inside brackets a "done thing"

Hell, use Lisp (a cool language (watch the flamewar begin)) or Scheme
(even cooler (Lisp with anorexia nervosa (who said "perfection is
acheived not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is
nothing else to be removed"))) and you'll think nothing of it (You
know you need to rethink the logical organization of your code when
the nesting level of parentheses causes source lines to wrap (which
isn't even a lisp vice, I'm maintaining code written by a (departed)
cop-rogrammer in C++ (on Windows NT, I need recovery bad) that has
N-deep if{} statements (where N>10) that are completely unneccessary
(a simple if(badshit) return; would do))) (why yes, as a matter of
fact, I *am* a sick twisted individual).

Chris.

--
| Christopher J.  Biggs | EMAIL: chris at stallion.oz.au (PGP and MIME OK)  |
| R&D Software Engineer | PHONE: +61 7 3270-4266  FAX: +61 7 3270-4245   |
| Stallion Technologies | Microsoft is not the Answer.                   |
\ Queensland, AUSTRALIA | Microsoft is the Question.  NO is the answer!  /





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