Content-type: text/html Manpage of osdchatd

osdchatd

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 15 December 2003
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

osdchatd - An on-screen display messaging daemon.

SYNOPSIS

osdchatd [options]

DESCRIPTION

osdchatd allows remote users to send messages directly onto the screen as an OSD. Very convenient in a local environment for quickly messaging admins or for those who do not wish to have full blown instant messaging clients. It sits in the background waiting for clients to connect, upon which a received message from a client will attempt to write directly to the screen. Many options are available to customize the look, feel and location of the incoming messsages.

OPTIONS

Available options:

-a <n>

Show announcements. Uses least significant bits of n. 1-user connected, 2-user disconnected, 4-blocked client attempting connection, 7-all, or 0-none. (Default: 2)

-b

Use block list to limit abusive clients who exceed the warning limit.

-c <color>

Set text color. See rgb.txt (comes with X). (Default: red)

-d <display>

Set X Display environment variable DISPLAY before launching the daemon. This is useful if you intend to start the daemon from an rc script and your X session will not be screen 0 (:0.0), as this is the default screen that osdchatd attempts to write to. (Default: :0.0)

-D

Turn debugging mode on -- use only for testing.

-f <font>

Set text font. Use xfontsel to pick out your font.

-h

Print usage information.

-k

Kills currently running daemon. Only one daemon can run at a time.

-l <lines>

Set maximum number of lines of text to show. (Default: 5)

-L

Log output to ~/.osdchat.log

-m <clients>

Set maximum number of clients the daemon will handle. Limit = 32. (Default: 10)

-o <offset>

Set offset number of pixels from either the top or the bottom of the screen. (Default: 80)

-p <port>

Set listening port for the daemon. (Default: 7447)

-P <format>

Customize the prompt format. Use special symbols to obtain system/user information: \s - insert white space \h - hostname, \n - real name \u - login user, \y - current tty.

Enclose format in quotes so the shell doesn't process them.

(Default: "\u@\h(\y)>\s")

-s <seconds>

Set number of seconds the text should be on the screen before disappearing. Use 0 for infinite. (Default: 5)

-t

Show text on top of the screen. (Default: bottom)

-T

Show timestamps. (Default: off)

-u

Set aging text to scroll upward. (Default: downward)

-v

Print version

-w <width>

Set line wrap width. The message will wrap at width amount of characters after the prompt. (Default: 60)

-W <level>

Set maximum warning level. Clients increase their warning level by sending messages too fast (less than a second apart). Messages too long to fit on the screen in one view will gain an even higher warning level. The warning level is decreased by sending messages more than 3 seconds apart. When a client exceeds the maximum warning level they are disconnected.

NOTES

Only one instance of the daemon can be running at any given time, so it is not currently possible to output to two or more different X sessions.

FILES

/etc/osdchatd.conf: System configuration file
~/.osdchatd: User configuration file
~/.osdchat.log: User log file

AUTHOR

Mike Smelov <mike-at-argoncorp-dot-com>

COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

See LICENSE for more info.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 09:22:42 GMT, December 15, 2003