TITLE: Xconsole LFS VERSION: Any if X is installed. AUTHOR: ktb SYNOPSIS: Xconsole is included with X. It's used to monitor system console messages on the desktop. This is one way to set it up. HINT: The first thing to do is create a named pipe to send the Sysklogd information xconsole will display. # mkfifo /dev/xconsole # chgrp tty /dev/xconsole # chmod 644 /dev/xconsole Permissions should be as follows. $ ls -l /dev/xconsole prw-r--r-- 1 root tty 0 Aug 19 13:07 /dev/xconsole The next step is to edit /etc/syslog.conf to set what you want outputted to /dev/xconsole. I like to dump everything with a priority of alert or higher, so I add the following line. *.* |/dev/xconsole To make the change take effect restart Sysklogd. # /etc/init.d/sysklogd restart Last but not least we need to fire up xconsole itself. $ xconsole -file /dev/xconsole If you aren't happy with the text window space, edit the "XConsole" file which is probably in /etc/X11/app-defaults/XConsole. Set text window to the desired size. For example: *text.width: 900 *text.height: 100 Xconsole also takes the geometry option so you might end up with a command similar to the one below, to put in your ~/.xinitrc file. xconsole -file /dev/xconsole -geometry +67+640 & See "man xconsole" for more customizations.