This project is deprecated

Try to use https://github.com/looran/qosd instead !

tailosd

Tail files with On Screen Display output

tailosd [-h] [-d] [-f CONFIG_FILE] [-l {info,low,unknown,medium,high}]
               [-p] [-P] [-r]
               [target [target ...]]

Tail files with On Screen Display output

positional arguments:
  target                File paths to monitor | systemd

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -d                    Debug mode
  -f CONFIG_FILE        Configuration file for severity filters and colors
  -l {info,low,unknown,medium,high}
                        Log level [default=info]
  -p                    Trigger pause of OSD display in running instance
  -P                    Trigger resume of OSD display in running instance
  -r                    Trigger reload of configuration in running instance

Example: Tail system logs

$ tailosd -f tailosd_example.conf /var/log/syslog

or with systemd:
$ tailosd -f tailosd_example.conf systemd

The configuration file contains rules to filter severity, set color and timeout of messages.

See tailosd_example.conf for example syntax.

Trigger reload of configuration in running tailosd instance:

$ tailosd -r

Example: Tail an arbitrary file:

$ tailosd file.log

Notes on tailing system logs

When displaying system logs, it is often usefull to quicly edit the configuration rules at runtime, to ignore some new anoying messages for example. To achieve this, you could bind commands like the following to a keyboard shortcut.

$ kate /home/user/.tailosd.conf ; tailosd -r

When the screenlock is active, or when performing particular activities, you might want to stop displaying the logs, and be informed of the events later.

Bind the following to screenlock activation, to pause OSD display:
$ tailosd -p

Unpause OSD display and display buffered events
(see configuration option "pause-buffer-severity"):
$ tailosd -P

Install

From the git:

$ git clone https://github.com/looran/tailosd.git
$ cd tailosd/
$ sudo python setup.py install

You may copy and edit at your convenience the configuration file example, for example to your home directory:

$ cp tailosd_example.conf ~/.tailosd.conf

Dependencies

libaosd
python-aosd
python-multitail
For systemd support: python-systemd

On Ubuntu (tested on 16.10):

Install libaosd
$ sudo apt install libaosd2 libaosd-dev

Install python-aosd
$ sudo apt install cython
$ sudo apt install libcairo2-dev libpango1.0-dev
$ sudo apt install python-cairo python-cairo-dev
$ sudo pip install https://github.com/arminha/python-aosd/archive/0.2.5.tar.gz

Install python-multitail
$ sudo pip install multitail

Install python-systemd for systemd support
$ sudo apt install python-systemd

Troubleshooting

Background of OSD messages is not transparent and it looks ugly

If your window manager does not support transparency, use xcompmgr. Look for -c and -C :

xcompmgr(1)
-c  Client-side compositing with soft shadows and translucency support.
-C  When -c is specified, attempts to avoid painting shadows on panels and docks.