Whenever I'm at the movies or watching some spy show on TV and I see some lonesome tech guy sitting at a computer trying to hack some system to help the hero of the day, I suddenly find myself more interested in the computer than the story. I start trying to guess the operating system, figure out what software they are using and determine if it is all some great piece of geekness that I haven't seen yet, or just a figment of some set managers imagination.

In any case, I'm constantly looking for cool ways to make my Mac desktop look just like what I see on the television and a few months ago, I found a real gem. GeekTool from Tynsoe.org not only makes my desktop look Uber-Geeky, but is extremely functional.

GeekTool allows you to display information and images on your desktop just like it was a part of your desktop background, and it keeps that information updated according to your preferences.

Click to Enlarge

As you can see by my desktop, I have three sections. The first section, in the upper left hand corner, is the output of my last backup log (I'll talk more about my backup program and log in another post). I can see how much data was sent to and from my backup drive and at what time the last backup completed.

The second section in the lower left is a script I created to monitor three linux servers for my clients. All three servers are checked every ten minutes and if for any reason one of them is down, I'll be notified on my desktop in addition to a voice spoken alert.

The third section in the middle is just a running update of my system log. I'll admit, I originally added this for the "geek look", but have since found it so useful when I'm on my mac that I can't imagine not having it.

To get started with your own desktop, first visit http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/download.php to download the latest version of GeekTool. Once installed, a new preference pane will be available in your Mac System Preferences. Open the GeekTool preferences and you should see something like this:

GeekTool Pref Pane

Click on "New Entry" near the bottom left to add a new section of info. You will have three options: File, Shell and Picture.

Selecting file will simply read any plain text file and display it on your desktop. By default, the console log should be in the path box.

The shell option will allow you to run a command line parameter and output the data to your desktop. For example, if you wanted to display your disk information, including size and usage, you would type "df -h" in the command field and choose how often you would like to refresh that information.

In my case, for my backup log, which is the output of an rsync script I created, I simply used the command "tail -3 /Users/myusername/rsync_result.txt".

My second piece of information which displays the status of several servers that I monitor is a little more complicated, but here is a quick example of the script I wrote:

#!/bin/bash
expToday=`date`
echo "Checking Server at ${expToday}"

if ! ssh myclient.theirserver.com uptime; then
echo "Warning. Client Server Failed to Respond and their server may be down"
say "WARNING. The Server at ClientName Failed to Respond."
fi

After saving the script as "check_server" and making it executable, I opened GeekTool to make a new entry, selected "Shell" and entered "/Users/myusername/Scripts/check_server" with a refresh time of 600. GeekTools then automatically runs the script every 10 minutes and displays the 'echos' on my desktop.

One more note: when you setup your different sections, don't forget to check the box to "Enable GeekTool"

I haven't used the "Picture" option yet because I haven't really had a need to, but checkout http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/ecrans.php to see some great examples of what other people are doing with GeekTools on their desktops.

I'll be adding some posts later on a more advanced script to monitor servers as well as a custom script I wrote to keep my documents and MobileMe iDisk in sync.

Until next time...