Viewing the console from X

[William O'Higgins]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2004 at 06:32:33PM -0500, Anton Markov wrote:
>William O'Higgins wrote:
>>I have often wanted to see the console output of programs launched from
>>X, but the only way that I know is to shut down X and look at the
>>underlying console, which obviously wrecks the arrangement of programs,
>>windows and associated states that I have built up on X over the hours,
>>days or weeks that they X server has been running.
>>
>>Is there a way that I can open up a window to "tail -f" the underlying
>>console?
>
>How about this:
>
>Start X manually with 'startx' or 'xinit' and redirect the output to a file:
>
>$ startx > ~/x.log 2>&1
>
>That'll redirect both the standard and error output to the file. It 
>would be the same as switching to the virtual terminal that you started 
>X from.

Okay, the above finally worked.  The xterm -C method didn't work for me
- I got a terminal, but nothing ever got written to it.

I had aliased startx as "x", so now I alias "startx > ~/x.log 2>&1" and
"x" and that works neatly.  Because I want to monitor stuff on an
ongoing basis I put together an Eterm theme that puts a borderless,
translucent, no-input-allowed terminal on the screen that executes "tail
-f ~/x.log".  Now that works wonderfully.  When I watch a DVD with Ogle
launched via a key binding I get the nag messages in that little window
- just what I wanted.  Thanks to all who chimed in with your advice.
-- 

yours,

William

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