Re: display popup message on X with crontab

[Hugo Vanwoerkom <hvw59601@care2.com>]

Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote:
> Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote:
> > Karsten M. Self wrote:
> > > on Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 03:41:52PM -0600, Hugo Vanwoerkom 
> > > (hvw59601@care2.com) wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > How would I popup an informative message on X from a crontab entry?
> > > >
> > > > There is xmessage, but from crontab?
> > >
> > > Set your $DISPLAY variable appropriately.
> > >
> > >     DISPLAY=:0.0 xmessage "My message"
> > >
> > > ... should work, if not in your crontab entry itself then in a script
> > > called by same.  ":0.0" should work for most circumstances.
> >
> > Karsten,
> >
> > Not that way, but:
> >
> > xmessage -file /xmessage.downmsg.msg -display :1.0
> >
> > works.
> > But I cannot get that to work from crontab and at the moment crontab 
> > is not mailing any actions that I can find.
> >
> > It works execution a script with that in it.
> >
> > However, everybody (I have a 2 seater Debian) must issue xhost + from 
> > their session for it to be allowed.
>
> That should be:
>
> /usr/bin/X11/xmessage -file /xmessage.downmsg.msg -display :1.0
>
>
> otherwise he complains that he cannot find xmessage.
>
> You can add font info:
>
> /usr/bin/X11/xmessage -center -file /xmessage.downmsg.msg -display :0.0 
> -font -adobe-times-bold-r-*-*-25-*-*-*-*-*
> -*-* -bg yellow -fg black

And xmessage has no beep facility. Better yet: program the speaker for a 
unique sound that makes this sort of message obvious.

So I wrote a Qt app. that does so and displays any richtext contained in 
a file and displays that file with a unique 3 beep warning that can be 
executed from crontab.

If anybody wants that, let me know at hugo van woerkom (but all one 
word) at yahoo dot com.

H