flexible desktop notifications using crontab bashscript which uses tail -f on logfiles using ssh

ssh-tailf-notify

#!/bin/bash 
usage='Usage: ssh-tailf-notify <user@server> <logfile> [grep args]

Easy way to receive desktop notifications based on remote logfile-events or named pipes

examples crontab:

* * * * * nohup /home/you/bin/ssh-tailf-notify [email protected] /home/you/irclogs/fnotify.txt -vE "(foo|bar)" &
* * * * * nohup /home/you/bin/ssh-tailf-notify [email protected] /home/sqz/irclogs/EFnet/#python.log -vE "(mynick)" &
* * * * * nohup /home/you/bin/ssh-tailf-notify [email protected] /var/log/messages "-E (memory|booking)" &
* * * * * CMD="cat" nohup /home/you/bin/ssh-tailf-notify [email protected] /home/you/pipe.fifo &

hints:
  1) make sure you have passwordless access to the server where irsii is running (ssh-keygen & ssh-copy-id)
  2) type in irssi: /set autolog on and/or use fnotify.pl to log /hilight words to ~/irclogs/fnotify.txt 
'

[[ ! -n "$2" ]] && { echo "$usage"; exit 1; }

IRSSISERVER="$1"; LOGFILE="$2"; LOCKFILE="/tmp/.lock-$(basename $0)${LOGFILE//\//-}"; 
shift;shift; GREPARGS="$*"

[[ ! -n $CMD ]] && CMD="tail -n1"                                                              # can be overruled
exec /usr/bin/flock -w 0 "$LOCKFILE" ssh -t $IRSSISERVER ${CMD} $LOGFILE | while read msg; do    
    [[ -n $GREPARGS ]] && { echo "$msg" | grep ${GREPARGS} &>/dev/null || continue; }
    gsettings set com.canonical.notify-osd gravity 2                                           # position box
    gsettings set com.canonical.notify-osd multihead-mode focus-follow                         # show on dual monitors
    killall /usr/lib/notify-osd/notify-osd;                                                    # clear buffer
    DISPLAY=:0.0 notify-send -t 2000 -c irc "$msg";                                            # display
done