On 30/05/13 12:15, Bjørn Mork wrote: > Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> writes: >> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 09:06:59PM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote: >>> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 05:11:35PM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: >>>> Le mercredi 29 mai 2013 à 16:31 +0200, Javier Fernandez-Sanguino a >>>> écrit : >>>>> Take for example, smartmoontools [1]. Currently, if an end-user >>>>> installs smartmoontools and a hard-disk fails (i.e. smartd detects a >>>>> problem with one HD) he will *not* see any notification: the failure >>>>> is sent through local e-mail. >>>> >>>> He will see a notification on his desktop. Clear, understandable and >>>> translated in his configured language: >>>> https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-disk-utility/tree/src/notify/gdusdmonitor.c >>>> (The code is different but already here in squeeze and wheezy.) >>> >>> What you propose requires: >>> * adding desktop environment specific code to every facility that may need >>> to send notifications >>> * adding such notifications to every other desktop environment >> >> Wrong, we already have org.freedesktop.Notifications in GNOME, >> KDE and Xfce. >> >> So those two points become: >> >> * adding cross-desktop code to every facility that may need to send >> notifications >> * adding a notification daemon to task-lxde >> >> There are libraries to help with the first point, of course. > > Wouldn't a daemon watching /var/mail/root and turning any mail into > desktop notifications solve most of this, while still allowing the same > notifications to reach a sysadmin on non-desktop systems? > I really think this is the way to go: By default install some application on the debian-desktop tasksel that displays on the desktop unread mails sent to root. Installing logcheck by default also would be nice. > The issue that worries me most about these desktop notification plans is > the possibility that some package may decide to unnecessarily drop > support for non-desktop systems, adding dependencies on the desktop > notification system. I believe we already have had a few examples of > such unnecessary dependencies on services which are "nice to have", like > GNOME depending on NetworkManager for example. > This issue is easily solved by ensuring that programs sending notifications do it by mail to root@localhost and not to some fancy new dbus thing.
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