Ideas for desktop notifications for long-running shell commands

Question

I'm currently trying to configure sphinxsearch. The indexing takes around 7 minutes. Too long to wait so I usually start doing some other tasks before testing the results. But I would like to be notified when the indexing is finished - what are your ideas? The problem is also that the sessions are running through ssh. Ideal would be some tray notification that would watch changes on the terminal that is either minimized or shown on a different virtual desktop.

Answer 1

A couple possibilities off the top of my head:

• play a music or alarmish sound file
• open a particular 'I'm done!' webpage with your browser (most browsers will just open a new tab or window if you they're already open)
• notify-send or gmessage or xmessage, which all do approximately the same thing: pop up an x-windows window with the message you specify.

Answer 2

To elaborate on @pjz's answer, you could use xmessage (or any other command that will make something happen visually) like this:

long-running-command; xmessage "I'm Done"

This will pop up a small notification window when your command is done.

Answer 3

I know the screen terminal program can produce a bell when output stops in a virtual screen... but I'm not sure if that will achieve exactly what you're looking for.

Answer 4

The current method in Linux is link text. You can interface to it from a shell script using dbus.

Answer 5

KDE's konsole has the option to notify you (bell/icon change) when a terminal session produces new output. Run the indexing in konsole, and append something like "&& echo done" to get output at the end (if there is none normally). Redirect regular output from the indexing.