How to Log All Notify-Send Actions on Ubuntu

lognotificationnotify-send

I keep getting very strange notifications which go away before I can read them, they are long, and appear at random times, the most recently one came up was during a kernel upgrade, it had a strange icon, and was long, but I didn't manage to read it because it was on the screen so briefly.

So I am wondering if there is any log which logs all calls to notify-send which logs the program calling it, and all the parameters given? Or if I can set up such a log to find out what these notifications are about? I am running Ubuntu GNOME 15.10 with GNOME 3.18.

Best Answer

Even didn't need a full script...
...but put it in the form of a script:

#!/bin/bash

file=$1

dbus-monitor "interface='org.freedesktop.Notifications'" |\
 grep --line-buffered "string" |\
 grep --line-buffered -e method -e ":" -e '""' -e urgency -e notify -v |\
 grep --line-buffered '.*(?=string)|(?<=string).*' -oPi |\
 grep --line-buffered -v '^\s*$' |\
 xargs -I '{}' echo {} >> $file

To run it

Copy the "script" into an empty file, save it as keep_log.sh
Run it with the logfile as argument with the command
```
/bin/bash /path/to/keep_log.sh /path/to/log.txt
```

The answer was retrieved from an earlier answer (not a dupe), in which this application of the method was mentioned as an example.

The answer I gave there, on its own turn, was based on this very nice answer, in which is explained that the method uses dbus-monitor to intercept the contents of notify-send. By editing the example there, we can make it write notify-send messages to a (log-) file.

Or, more elegant

...would be to add the date to the logfile, producing a logfile like:

---di 10 mei 2016 17:37:20 CEST---
SOme kind of a message!
---di 10 mei 2016 17:37:20 CEST---
The last message was misspelled so here i9s another one

In that case, the script would be:

#!/bin/bash

logfile=$1

dbus-monitor "interface='org.freedesktop.Notifications'" |\
grep --line-buffered "string" |\
grep --line-buffered -e method -e ":" -e '""' -e urgency -e notify -v |\
grep --line-buffered '.*(?=string)|(?<=string).*' -oPi |\
grep --line-buffered -v '^\s*$' |\
xargs -I '{}' \
printf "---$( date )---\n"{}"\n" >> $logfile

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Notify-send and terminal command

You format text with html code

notify-send -i terminal "<font size=16 color=blue><b><i>'bash -c ls'</b></i></font>"  "execution complete"

change what is in the single quotes with the command you wish, feel free to change the size and color to what you wish.

If you need assistance, post your code and more detailed information on what you wish to change

Gnome – Show Notify-Send Content in Gnome’s Lockscreen

Thanks to Chris Williams (chrisawi) from the Gnome IRC Channel the following solution was found:

Create a script called notifier in /.local/bin/ with this content:

#!/usr/bin/python3

# License: MIT
# Author: Chris Williams

APP_ID = "com.example.Notifier"

import sys
from gi.repository import GLib, GObject, Gio

class Notifier(Gio.Application):
    def __init__(self):
        Gio.Application.__init__(self, application_id=APP_ID, flags=Gio.ApplicationFlags.HANDLES_COMMAND_LINE)
        self.set_option_context_parameter_string ("ID TITLE [MESSAGE...]")
        self.add_main_option("icon", ord('i'), GLib.OptionFlags.NONE, GLib.OptionArg.STRING, "Icon name or file", None)
        #self.add_main_option("quit", ord('q'), GLib.OptionFlags.NONE, GLib.OptionArg.NONE, "Quit", None)
        self.add_main_option(GLib.OPTION_REMAINING, 0, GLib.OptionFlags.NONE, GLib.OptionArg.STRING_ARRAY, "", None)

    def do_command_line(self, cl):
        Gio.Application.do_command_line(self, cl)
        opts = cl.get_options_dict().end().unpack()

        #if opts.get("quit"):
        #    self.quit()

        args = opts.get(GLib.OPTION_REMAINING, [])
        if len(args) >= 2:
            notification = Gio.Notification()
            notification.set_title(args[1])

            if len(args) >= 3:
                notification.set_body(" ".join(args[2:]))

            icon_str = opts.get("icon")
            if icon_str:
                try:
                    icon = Gio.Icon.new_for_string(icon_str)
                except GLib.Error as e:
                    if not e.matches(Gio.io_error_quark(), Gio.IOErrorEnum.INVALID_ARGUMENT):
                        raise
                else:
                    notification.set_icon(icon)

            self.send_notification(args[0], notification)
        else:
            print ("not enough arguments")

        return 0

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app = Notifier()
    app.run(sys.argv)

Mention it in the original notify-send script, that also lies in /.local/bin/:

#!/bin/bash
while : ; do
    notifier -i emote-love-symbolic idxyz "$(sort -R ~/Sonstiges/Affirmationen/Affirmationen.txt | head -n 1)"
    sleep 30m   # time in minutes
done

You also have to create a .desktop file, either in /.local/share/applications/ or in /.config/autostart/ if you want this script to be executed at startup. My /affirmationen.desktop in /.config/autostart/ looks like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Affirmationen
Exec=affirmationen
Icon=emote-love-symbolic
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
Terminal=false
X-GNOME-UsesNotifications=true
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

Enjoy!