README
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2 flasher - Copyright (C) 2002 Murray Nesbitt (websrc@nesbitt.ca)
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4 This program is protected and licensed under the following terms and
5 conditions: 1) it may not be redistributed in binary form without the
6 explicit permission of the author; 2) when redistributed in source
7 form, in whole or in part, this complete copyright statement must
8 remain intact.
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10 flasher monitors changes to one or more files, and indicates the
11 number of writes to these files by briefly flashing a console LED
12 once for each write. The flashing sequence is repeated, after
13 a brief pause, until the files have been read. As the files are
14 subsequently read, the number of LED flashes is reduced. When all
15 monitored files have been read, the console LED will be disabled.
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17 The most obvious use is to monitor specific system log or mail files.
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19 Multiple LEDs can be used. Each possible LED (-c, -n or -s) takes a
20 list of colon-separated file arguments. For example, when invoked as:
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22 # ./flasher -s /var/log/messages:/var/mail/root
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24 the Scroll Lock LED will flash once for each write made to either
25 of these files, until the files are read. When /var/log/messages
26 has been read, the Scroll Lock LED will continue to flash once for
27 each write that has been made to /var/mail/root, until it also has
28 been read.
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30 The list of files can include files that don't yet exist.
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32 See the manual pages for more information.
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34 The program was designed without arbitrary limits of any kind (#
35 of files it can handle, etc.). Some of the behaviour (e.g. flash
36 characteristics) can be modified--see "flasher.h" for details.
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38 Supported platforms:
39 o FreeBSD
40 o Linux
41 o Solaris
42 o SCO Unix was supported at one time, but is currently untested.
43 Feedback is welcome!
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45 Support for other operating systems should require only minimal
46 changes to "flasher.h". One final note: 'gcc' is the assumed compiler
47 on all platforms.
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