On Mon, 18 Feb 2002 22:23:40 -0600
"Jason DeWitt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Hey, I've got a question.

Okay, shoot. :)

> On many screenshots of linux desktops that I've seen it looks like they have
> a terminal set as part of their background. as seen in this picture
> http://www.fibrespeed.net/~mbabcock/linux/images/desktop-20010102-01.png

Notice what the "terminal" is doing: it's monitoring one of the
system logs.   i.e. it's running "tail -f /var/log/messages" 
(or syslog perhaps).

The basic app to do this is called root-tail.  Essentially it's a
version of the "tail" command that writes characters to the root
window.   There's an improved version called moRT (my own root-tail)
that adds the capability of monitoring multiple logs in different sections
of the screen with only one instance of the program running.

There's also root-portal...
( http://root-portal.sourceforge.net )...also based on root-tail,
which seems to be more integrated with GNOME. From the screenshots,
it has a nice graphical configurator.

I'd bet that guy is using root-portal, because his log is colorized (there
are seperate programs that'll do that), but I dont think basic old root-tail
handles ANSI color escape sequences.   Also note that the screenshot is
helixcode GNOME.

--
Mark Orr
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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