However, this was a less than ideal solution.įinding a script called for irssi, I was able to make irssi write highlights to a file (~/.irssi/fnotify). The only real way to keep an eye on IRC was to have a separate Terminal just for that ssh session and keep it visible, so that I would notice if anyone tried to get my attention. Unfortunately, by having the ssh session to the virtual machine as one of many tabs in Terminal, it is easy to miss any highlights in irssi, so someone could be trying to get my attention and I may not realize it for quite a while. The benefits to this are that Firefox gets the kerberos credentials and routing to the VPN from within the virtual machine, and I get Firefox as an application on the Mac desktop. The only GUI application used is Firefox, which I can get on the Mac desktop by starting X11.app and using ssh -X to the virtual machine, and starting Firefox from the command-line. With this, I can ssh into the virtual machine from the host, where mutt and irssi run. In the interest of saving power, the Fedora system turned into a virtual machine on the Mac. The VPN is not accessible outside of the virtual machine (the primary reason being that I used to run two physical systems: one running Fedora, the other OS X, because each belonged to a different kerberos realm). I’m going to describe a unique method of using the two together to accomplish something I’ve needed myself, in the hopes that it might get the creative juices flowing for how GeekTool and Growl can work together for you.įor security reasons, I have a VMware Fusion virtual machine running Fedora, which connects to a VPN. I’m also a big fan of GeekTool, which allows you to display various bits of information on your desktop, like uptime information or the weather, or anything else you like that can be run from a script or contained in a text file.Ĭombining the two is even more interesting, and there are tons of possibilities here. For instance, Growl can alert you when new files are downloaded from Dropbox, when a track changes in iTunes, and so forth. I am a huge fan of the free Growl application, which allows other applications to tell you what’s happening with them. Find out what you can do with Growl and GeekTool on a Mac. Vm=`/Applications/VMware\ Fusion.Finding one app that does exactly what you want is one thing, but combining two apps to do something really specific to your needs is really cool.
# Makes calls for VMWare, Parallels and Virtual Box and This will go in the same directory or a sub whatever you like. Here is the vms.sh script, just shell scripting nothing crazy. The code will call my shell script then display it accordingly. Below is my VM script that I wrote for Übersicht. So I wont get into that so much, but here is what it may/could look like. There is plenty of information on the website to get this installed and configured the way you want. Shows what virtual machines are running and what they are. Although each widget has differences, there is some consistency.ĭefault location of widgets: /Users/ /Library/Application Support/Übersicht/widgets Widget Name There are default location and other settings that will be changed after you get them installed. When you add a widget to the widget directory it will automatically pop up somewhere on your desktop. Here is a list and desktop location of what each one actually does.
When you right click on the icon you will get something like this: Right click on Übersicht icon When you get Übersicht loaded you will get a menu icon in which you can hide/unhide, edit, restart, open widget folder, etc. My main desktop/monitor using Übersicht Second desktop/monitor Third desktop/monitor Below you can see several widgets some like the “clock” are repeated on all my monitors. I tried to make my desktop as clean as aI could but still provide me the widgets that works for me. I created a couple myself that have been downloaded many times. You can also upload you own widgets for the community to use. In my case I have at least three monitors active at any given moment so this is a really great feature. I also like the fact you can have different things for multiple monitors/desktops. There is also place for widgets, as they call them, that will give you dozens of ready made containers that you can add to your desktop. I found it works really well and a bit cleaner for some things at least for me. Since then I looked for a substitute and found Übersicht. Initially I had it on this tool but it went silent for quite awhile as far as updates go until recently. There was and tynially still is a tool called Geektool that allowed you to accomplish this. Long ago I wanted to run certain commands and output them to my desktop but not just statically I wanted it to update.