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."

Music?

[FlyByPC (841016)]

K-D-E ... and ... L-A-M-P / keep on running in perfect harmony...

I can just picture it now...

[Anonymous Coward]

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. :-(

Neat! But..

[Rob T Firefly (844560)]

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.

Themes

[Daemonstar (84116)]

So if the server starts getting flooded, I can make it play the Star Wars Darth Vader theme? :P

Re:

[Walt Dismal (534799)]

"R2D2, I don't know what's gotten into you! Stop all those whistling noises! I'm never going to take you anywhere anymore! Want some Ritalin? What do you mean, Princess Leia needs our help? "

Re:

[nmb3000 (741169)]

So if the server starts getting flooded, I can make it play the Star Wars Darth Vader theme? :P

I don't know if it will sound quite like that, but somebody has setup their firewall to play sound [slashdot.org] as incoming packets hit it.

You know its bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

When all you hear is "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

sound samples?

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

Anyone have any audio files of this to give us an idea of what it sounds like?

Re:sound samples?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two at the bottom of TFA.

Re:

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

Ahhh. Thank you very much. I missed those.

Re:

[Crazyscottie (947072)]

Sounds from the development machines at work [jonathancoulton.com]

GPP

[Speare (84249)]

When reading this blurb about using system condition to drive a "melody" of diagnostic signals, the first thing that came to my mind was a certain automatic doorway on the Heart of Gold. It was positively humming with joy when it was able to open and close for the people wandering through, thanks to an implementation of Genuine People Personalities(tm) software. From the TV series, the robotic sing-song line, "Glad to be of seeer-vice!" just floated through my mind.

Re:

[spellraiser (764337)]

Or maybe they could do it Marvin-style:

"Processes? Don't talk to me about processes ..."

Related idea or prior art

[dereference (875531)]

I guess it doesn't quite count as a dupe, but this is the same concept [slashdot.org] as monitoring a network by music.

Re:

[tylernt (581794)]

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.

Great....

[justkarl (775856)]

I want minor chords when something is failing, and business as usual should play "Walking on Sunshine"...

So does this also mean that people will start releasing CDs based on log files?

Re:Great....

[cyber0ne (640846)]

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 :)

Re:

[Hijacked Public (999535)]

When I open Firefox I want my memory meter to play Black Flag's Gimme, Gimme, Gimme.

From the Article

[Orrin Bloquy (898571)]

"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.

Re:

[BadMrMojo (767184)]

Peart's colleagues - Lifeson and Lee - were even more outspoken in their comments. "[The RIAA have] taken care of everything, from the words you hear to the songs you sing," decried Lee.

Sounds of a Linux server

[Salvance (1014001)]

This could be really cool on a desktop (probably better than listening to all the beeps and boops spurted out by my Windows desktop right now), but I wonder how "harmonious" it could possibly be if run on a server? This would take techno to a whole new level.

Re:

[schwaang (667808)]

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.

That noise? Its the "Everything's OK" alarm.

[Kenja (541830)]

Sounds like this would get anoying realy quick. What's wrong with just running Nagios or the like?

Re:

[pclminion (145572)]

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.

Just imagine if.

[LWATCDR (28044)]

Google loaded this at one of it's datacenters!

Re:

[frdmfghtr (603968)]

Google loaded this at one of it's datacenters!

The next Google app---"Google Symphony"

*cymbal crash*

[GillBates0 (664202)]

That was the sound of Nautilus crashing.

Blowing the speakers to Kingdom Come...

[creimer (824291)]

That's fine and dandy if your system is operating fine. But what if it's not and starts playing "The Overture of 1812" [wikipedia.org] with the cannon fire? Kiss those surround sound speakers and your eardrums goodbye.

Oblig Simpsons (aka Million Dollar Idea Eh?)

[decipher_saint (72686)]

Kent Brockman: "Artie made megabucks with a revolutionary invention, a converter that changes that horrible modem noise into easy listening music..."

*modem noise starts...Georgy Girl starts playing*

I wonder if this would work on a Windows box? Would it sound like all your least favourite Country-Western songs as played on the bagpipe?

Exactly...

[skinfitz (564041)]

...what I've been looking for - I think I will be spending some time with this.

I might see if I can pump the data from an IDS into it too.

Just in time for the holidays

[Sneakernets (1026296)]

How about a Beowulf Cluster Choir?

if ALSA driver fails to load.

[EmperorKagato (689705)]

If the ALSA driver fails to load what sound or music should I expect it to play?

Re:

[DragonFodder (712772)]

The same sound as "one hand clapping" .... or that proverbial "tree fallinig a forest".

Re:

[chris_eineke (634570)]

4'33"

B movie sci-fi sounds

[Easy2RememberNick (179395)]

It would be like working in a 1960's sci-fi B movie.

Changes

[pev (2186)]

There've been a few mods on Linux based embedded systems where the heartbeat LED pulses at a speed relative to the CPU load. On a similar vein I like the idea of the tempo being relative to load / IO activity :-)

~Pev

I just couldn't resist this one.....

[plopez (54068)]

So, if a server crashes and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Re:

[johnfink (810028)]

That depends on your definition of 'sound':

the sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations transmitted through the air or other medium.

No, it doesn't make a sound.

mechanical vibrations transmitted through an elastic medium, traveling in air at a speed of approximately 1087 ft. (331 m) per second at sea level.

Yes, it does make a sound.

A couple of yours ago...

[A beautiful mind (821714)]

...someone made a program to "audiolize" system load as raindrops. Couldn't see the point back then, can't see it now.

Peep: network auralizer

[Oz0ne (13272)]

Did this years ago. Too bad the project was abandoned. It could monitor one computer, or many. It never had a good client really to do it remotely, but it was pretty cool in a server room. I ran it at an ISP around 98, 99 I think.

Sonic failure prediction

[Mixel (723232)]

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.

Bring back the line printers

[FerretFrottage (714136)]

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.

I bet...

[zlogic (892404)]

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 :-)

You could do something similar with

[dubbreak (623656)]

Chuck [princeton.edu] or Marsyas [cs.uvic.ca]. And it would probably be easier to do something more complicated such as use samples, have multiple threads (well shreds in chuck, you spork a shred) and do other fun stuff. Worth checking both out if you are into playing with audio (chuck has binaries for win and osx, source for linux, while marsyas is compile only).

also done in 1956

[enbody (472304)]

We recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of construction of the university's first computer http://www.computing.msu.edu/50years/mistic.html [msu.edu]. A panel of the original builders and users was convened to discuss the history. One tidbit which was interesting and relevant to this thread was that they tied a speaker to the sign bit so they could monitor the health of the computer while it was running. Given that output was on paper tape the aural monitoring was useful. I found their choice of the sign bit

Sounds a bit like "peep"

[Bagheera (71311)]

This sounds a bit like "Peep" [usenix.org] the "Network Auralizer" released back in 2000. That used sound bites rather than machine generated music, but had a similar effect in that a SysAdmin could monitor multiple systems just by having the background sounds going.

I used it in a couple of places, and it worked relatively well - especially when the rest of the shop was quiet.

Gone are the days...

[Nefarious Wheel (628136)]

...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.

Re:

[Kenja (541830)]

Twas Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Long Dark teatime of the Soul was about the Norse Gods fighting lawyers, oh and refigerators being left unatended long enough that they spring forth as new deities.

Re:

[CRCulver (715279)]

That's an interesting link. There's actually another Nordic composer whose father worked for IBM, namely Magnus Lindberg [fimic.fi] and he grew up learning to turn computing power to the purposes of musical composition back when one had to hack LISP and couldn't depend on any pretty graphical interface. His computer-guided pieces like "KRAFT" [amazon.com] or "Engine" [amazon.com] really do sound like adoration of the raw power early hackers on timeshares felt blessed to have access to.

Re:

[cbr2702 (750255)]

It's just a perl script. Make it run on your desktop and get it's input by polling the servers.