Comment 5 for bug 535417

I've been trying to get something usable at least using notify-send as an external program to trigger, but I'm having trouble getting it to execute on failure, and I got sick of unplugging a hard drive and then waiting for the entire array to rebuild. If I can figure out how to get it working, maybe I could come up with a new default mdadm config file with external program notification.

However, that runs into another bug- Ubuntu's default notifier applet ignores the timeout parameter from notify-send, so there's no way to ensure the message stays on the screen for a while without popping up a dialog box with an OK button or something. I like a notification bubble better than a dialog box, but I think obviously the user should have to click that the message was read... which is no longer an option- Ubuntu notification bubbles aren't allowed to have buttons, nor can you specify the amount of time they're displayed for (this regression has been declared as by design).

Sooo something other than notify-send will probably be necessary. I just don't know what other options there are.

I don't like the local mail option since Ubuntu doesn't normally even have the concept of it. All of my mail is webmail, so I wouldn't want a mail client running just to see if I have a drive failure- doesn't make much sense to me.