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Monitor a Linux Box With Machine Generated Music
mcappel writes "Linux and Unix admins are familiar with vmstat and top, which are visual tools displaying the health of a computer. chordStats adds a new interface to a system monitoring setup — information passed through tone, timbre, and harmony. IBM's Nathan Harrington, who wrote Knock Some Commands Into Your Laptop, created a simple Perl script to send note events to FluidSynth that forces various system events to be interpreted as a part of a harmonious interval, and looks at options for enhancing a musical system monitor."
K-D-E ... and ... L-A-M-P /
keep on running in perfect harmony...
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
This is a cool idea and all, but the crabby old Linux box I run would probably come out sounding like the Tonto, Tarzan, and Frankenstein chorus.
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So if the server starts getting flooded, I can make it play the Star Wars Darth Vader theme? :P
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When all you hear is "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
Anyone have any audio files of this to give us an idea of what it sounds like?
This guy's the limit!
"All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted," lead engineer Bruce Peart commented shortly before being arrested by the RIAA for accidentally reproducing "I Want It That Way" on his desktop. Under the DMCA, monkeys are no longer allowed near typewriters, unless under contract to reality television producers.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Sounds like this would get anoying realy quick. What's wrong with just running Nagios or the like?
You can continue monitoring while you go to the bathroom. Wait, do you take your laptop in the bathroom with you? Nevermind.
That's fine and dandy if your system is operating fine. But what if it's not and starts playing "The Overture of 1812" with the cannon fire? Kiss those surround sound speakers and your eardrums goodbye.
I want minor chords when something is failing, and business as usual should play "Walking on Sunshine"...
Your ideal server condition is to be playing "Walking On Sunshine" _all the time_? God, I'd WANT things to fail after a while if that was the case :)
http://publicvoidlife.blogspot.com
My boss hears about this "great" idea, and suddenly, I'm having conversations that sound like this with upper management....
:-(
Big Boss: "What's the status of our servers right now?"
Me: "Well, sir, it's like this. The web server is all light classical, but the mail server has gone a bit blues; we'll try to upgrade it to something jazzier once the new shipment comes in."
Big Boss: "Any word on how Joe's doing with the corporate intranet issues?"
Me: "Well, sir, it was death metal when we arrived this the morning; he's trying to make it perkier, but so far it's still stuck at atonal screechings..."
Big Boss: "It's not going go all John Cage on us, is it?!!"
Me: "No sir. Not this time. I swear!
Big Boss: "Well, okay. Keep up the tempo!"
(thinks)Hey, managing this technology stuff is easier than I thought!"
Me: (thinks) Must stop bosses from reading slashdot.
How about a Beowulf Cluster Choir?
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
If the ALSA driver fails to load what sound or music should I expect it to play?
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So, if a server crashes and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
...someone made a program to "audiolize" system load as raindrops. Couldn't see the point back then, can't see it now.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
A much more useful instrument would be a microphone (or emf, rpm sensor) on the fans and some software coupled to that that predicts when the fan is about to fail. Also maybe for hard drives. I know sofware is used in cash machines that tracks the activities of the transducers and actuators, then sends a "fix me" notification to HQ, often many hours before a mechanical failure becomes serious enough to disable the machine; and that has been very successful.
Back in the "old" days, we had techs that could tell you the error/fault that had occurred by the sound pattern produced by the line printers. To the very last one, they were upset/angry when the printers where replaced with quieter versions as this now meant they had to look up from playing solitaire/day trading to actually look if there were any significant events.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
I bet that if you use the music from this idea, create lyrics from logs and memory dumps and use a text-to-speech for singing, this would sound better than most stuff RIAA sells :-)
These concepts remind me of an old Novell "bouncing ball" screensaver. The ball had a "tail" that grew in length as the load on the server increased.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
A slashdotting sounds like this: "Kaaaaaaaaaahhhhnn!"
I just tried it on my desktop (fluidsynth is in Fedora Extras), and I think it would probably be more useful on a server.
Because the state of the cpu/disk/network are just all over the map in normal desktop use, so I'm not getting useful information.
But on a server the state probably changes more slowly, and you can quickly compare the sonic-state to what you expect your server to be doing.
...when you could stick an AM radio on top of the GA16/440, tune the radio to the far end of the band and listen to your programs compile. You could tell when it was sorting it's symbol table, was very melodic.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear