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Idea #10477: Many dmesg and syslog errors should appear as notification balloons as well

Written by Endolith the 29 Jun 08 at 19:47. Related project: Gnome. Status: New
Rationale
If you plug in a USB device that is malfunctioning or not detected correctly, for instance, errors will be generated in the System Log, but nothing at all will happen in GNOME.

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Solution #1: Show system errors in notification area
Written by Endolith the 29 Jun 08 at 19:47.
Things like this should generate friendly graphical error balloons so that people at least recognize that something's gone wrong, instead of just thinking the device was not even recognized.

As braaivleis points out, it doesn't have to actually pop up the balloon; it can be like the updates icon that appears, but only shows a balloon when you click on it.

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Eldmannen wrote on the 29 Jun 08 at 20:58
I kind of agree.

But at the same time, it must not get too much popups, people really hate that.

_sebastian_ wrote on the 29 Jun 08 at 22:50
Same here, agree but... a while ago I read something about "the Rule of Silence" http://www.linfo.org/rule_of_silence.html so show only errors meaningful to users. Haven't said that I think it could turn out to be quite difficult to filter what is important and what not.

coolaj86 wrote on the 29 Jun 08 at 23:31
I hate pop-ups. I don't want them to notify me of updates. I don't want them to notify me that something has crashed.

I think that updates should be automatic - maybe a pop-up just to say "System has been updated. Things might get quirky if you don't at least log out within the next coupel of days" and likewise, a crashed application should automatically report itself.

On the other hand... yeah, I see your point... but on the other hand there's a reason that we Linux users have switched to Linux and I think that getting away from pop-ups is one of them.

zooounds wrote on the 30 Jun 08 at 06:58
As long as it won't be like Windows with popups for
everything:

"Ahem, I found new hardware"
"Oh, it's a HID device"
"Wait, it's a mouse I think"
"OK, you'r good to go"

sebsauvage wrote on the 30 Jun 08 at 08:38
Very good idea !... as long as it's possible to configure a filter.

braaivleis wrote on the 30 Jun 08 at 11:08
Maybe it doesn't have to be a popup but rather an icon (like the update status icon). When you hover over it you get the summary of the problem. If you click on it you get the option to view the details of the problem. etc.

One should be able to switch off this mechanism off.
One should be able to switch on the icon + popup option.

And once errors or messages have been viewed, they must not be there when you get a new problem. (obviously they should remain in the log file).

Endolith wrote on the 30 Jun 08 at 23:33
"I hate pop-ups. I don't want them to notify me of updates."

Why? Notification balloons are the best way to notify the user of things like this.

Invisibly appending the error to a log file is not very useful for the typical user, who will never know it was logged or how to find it.

Popping up a modal dialog is awful for usability, interrupting the user's workflow and being annoying.

Unobtrusive pop-up balloons like this are the best way I've seen to do things like this.

"Maybe it doesn't have to be a popup but rather an icon (like the update status icon). When you hover over it you get the summary of the problem. If you click on it you get the option to view the details of the problem. etc."

Yeah that's completely fine. I guess I consider them different aspects of the same thing.

BungaMan wrote on the 3 Jul 08 at 20:09
No no no no no no no. I hate those balloons. Notifications have no use.

For errors, either the system can continue in which case the user shouldn't be bothered or the system crashes in which case you will find out anyway.

New updates are automatically visible because the icon appears. That is enough. And if you miss it, the system can still ask you when starting up or closing down "Would you like to install the new packages first?". And if you want to install them immediatly when new packages are available then configure it so that they are installed automatically.

You can however make it configurable so that each person can set there own preference.

Those notifications are annoying and distracting.

Endolith wrote on the 8 Jul 08 at 03:56
"For errors, either the system can continue in which case the user shouldn't be bothered or the system crashes in which case you will find out anyway."

Are you being sarcastic? Making fun of Linux users who want to make things as difficult as possible for the user? Surely no sane person actually thinks this way.

Endolith wrote on the 11 Sep 08 at 14:25
I've made a proof-of-concept for this, setting syslog to write to a pipe and then reading the pipe with a Python script and turning the messages into libnotify pop-ups.

syslog even lets you forward messages from one computer to another, so I can be notified on my laptop of errors happening on my desktop!

When I've got it cleaned up and working well I'll post it on Ubuntu Forums.

jtniehof wrote on the 7 Feb 10 at 21:30
For those who are interested, I have a project to pop-up syslog messages at http://jtniehof.github.com/syslog-notify/

At this point it's very much a work in progress, only the source code is available. A precompiled package will be a few weeks out. I welcome feedback.


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