How-to: Notify-osd to the bottom-right of screen.

[optimize me]

I was searching for some way to move the notify-osd bubbles from the top right of my screen to somewhere - anywhere - else. I found gold at this site: http://dagus.org/2009/06/09/ubuntu-noti ... he-bottom/

I've used his patch, and it does work as advertised in Gloria Main. I have noticed that when I get a bubble with a large mount of text, as in an email notification, some of the text is chopped off at the bottom of my screen. I think this is because I don't use Gnome panels at all, and if I'm not mistaken, notify-osd positions its bubbles relative to a panel edge. Someone else can feel free to chime in and correct me on that.

If anybody spots any errors or knows a way to streamline this process, feel free to post here or shoot me a message and I'll make the changes.

This entire process takes place in a terminal. If you're afraid of using a terminal, I'm sorry to hear that, and maybe someone will make a script to automate this process.

Let's get started..

Open a terminal and start with the command

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mkdir notify

Of course, you can name it anything you want. I'll be sticking with the name 'notify' throughout this process.

(You can use the text editor of your choice, gedit or whatever. If you opt for a different text editor, I'll leave it to you to create a file 'patch' and save it in the current directory. Simply skip this next step, and just copy and paste the code for the patch however you see fit. I prefer nano so I can stay right inside the terminal.)

***Enter the command

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touch patch && nano patch

Then paste in the following text by pressing CTRL-SHIFT-V or by right-clicking with your mouse

--- notify-osd-0.9.11/src/defaults.c 2009-05-28 23:18:56.000000000 +0200
+++ defaults.c 2009-05-28 23:14:13.000000000 +0200
@@ -2241,15 +2241,13 @@

/* workarea rectangle */
g_object_get (self, "desktop-left", &rect.x, NULL);
- g_object_get (self, "desktop-top", &rect.y, NULL);
+ g_object_get (self, "desktop-bottom", &rect.y, NULL);
g_object_get (self, "desktop-width", &rect.width, NULL);
g_object_get (self, "desktop-height", &rect.height, NULL);
}

*y = rect.y;
- *y += EM2PIXELS (defaults_get_bubble_vert_gap (self), self)
- - EM2PIXELS (defaults_get_bubble_shadow_size (self), self);
-
+ *y -= EM2PIXELS (defaults_get_bubble_min_height (self), self);
if (gtk_widget_get_default_direction () == GTK_TEXT_DIR_LTR)
{
*x = rect.x + rect.width;

Press CTRL-X to write the changes to the file, and press enter to save it to 'patch', which will save the file and then exit the nano text editor, taking you back to your terminal prompt.

Next, you'll need to grab a couple packages. The instructions at the original web-site use apt-src to download the notify-osd package from the repos, and I had to install that. I'm pretty sure the build-essential package is needed here, too, so grab that while you're at it if you don't already have it.

Install the apt-src package:

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sudo aptitude install build-essential apt-src

Then, use apt-src to download the notify-osd package into the 'notify' directory you created.

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sudo apt-src install notify-osd

Once it's complete, change directories

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cd notify-osd-0.9.11/src/

and apply the patch

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patch < ~/notify/patch

Now you have to build the patched program

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sudo apt-src build notify-osd

Finally, go back up two levels (either by using cd .. twice or just cd ~/notify) and use dpkg to install the patched version of notify-osd

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sudo dpkg -i notify-osd_0.9.11-0ubuntu3_i386.deb

That's it! The changes are instant, and don't require you to restart X or reboot. While you're still in the terminal, you can use notify-send to test it out

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notify-send "This is a test."

If all went well and everything works, you're free to delete the 'notify' directory and it's contents. If you have any problems, post them here and we'll see what we can do to help out.

***EDIT: Here is a link to the files that apt-src downloads, plus the patch, all in one tar.lzma archive. You should be able to pick right up from applying the patch step.
http://rapidshare.com/files/266374718/notify.tar.lzma

[emorrp1]

cool, hopefully Ubuntu will improve the rather lovely but rough around the edges notifier for next release, including the ability to customise the positioning.

[Old Marcus]

When executing 'sudo apt-src install notify-osd' I get this error:

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Could not open file /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_jaunty_main_source_Sources - open (2 No such file or directory)
E: No such source

I have the source repositories enabled in sources.list and I'm executing the command from the notify directory I created.

[optimize me]

When executing 'sudo apt-src install notify-osd' I get this error:

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Could not open file /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_jaunty_main_source_Sources - open (2 No such file or directory)
E: No such source

I have the source repositories enabled in sources.list and I'm executing the command from the notify directory I created.

It's not coming from the source repo, it comes from archive.ubuntu.com/main in the origins tab of Synaptic, but that doesn't explain why you're unable to download it. It could be the repos were down for maintenance for a little while... it happens sometimes.

Try grabbing it right out of Synaptic. Once you've marked a package for installation, I believe the option exists to only download the package and not install it. You would then be able to find it (I'm pretty sure) in /var/cache/apt/archives (if not there then use the locate command to find the files it grabs). Just cp it to the notify folder you created and go from there.

EDIT: I just looked up the error you were getting in Google. Are you sure you're set to download software from the internet and not from the install cd? Please check your sources.list file and make sure.

[Old Marcus]

If I was set to install software from the install cd, I wouldn't have installed anything, since I haven't had it in since I installed Gloria. I don't believe it is default, anyway. But no, I am set to download from the internet.

Looking in synaptic, see no option to download source. How do I go about this? I've found the package, but cannot download it, or it's source.

[optimize me]

Looking in synaptic, see no option to download source. How do I go about this? I've found the package, but cannot download it, or it's source.

I think you just hit the apply button and in the confirmation window is a checkbox to just download (not install) the package.

I'm not sure that will work, though. There were a couple other things that came with it.

Tell you what: I'm not really sure why apt-src isn't working for you. To be honest, the first time I heard about it was when I followed this tutorial from the web page - I installed it with aptitude and it worked straight away for me.

I just downloaded the source packages into a folder, and along with the patch, placed it into a tar.lzma archive. Even with the high compression ratio lzma gives, it still comes in at 825KB. I don't know if the forums want to host a file that size, so here's a rapidshare link: http://rapidshare.com/files/266374718/notify.tar.lzma

Download it and extract it to your desktop. You should be able to pick up from where the patch is applied. Let me know if you have any other problems.

[emorrp1]

rather than apt-src, you could use the more standard apt sources, any one of the following should work (no need for sudo):

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apt source notify-osd
aptitude source notify-osd
apt-get source notify-osd

[Old Marcus]

I'm at the point of patching the program, but I keep getting this error when trying to run 'patch < ~/notify/patch':

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patching file defaults.c
patch: **** malformed patch at line 5: /* workarea rectangle */

I edited the patch file and deleted that line, but I just got another malformed patch error.