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I am seeking a panel object of some kind which would put a flashing light on the panel for Lubuntu 14.04 LTS, for I have an elderly small screen laptop which has no drive activity lamp.

Lots of such for Windows, not finding it for GNOME/LXDE except for System Monitor, which is overkill for my taste. Just a flashing light on the panel, that's all I care for.

Byte Commander
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K7AAY
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  • Some reading I did says one is built in to Lxde, just right click on an empty space on the top or bottom panel --> select Add to panel and choose System Monitor. – Mark Kirby Sep 10 '15 at 04:58
  • TY, Mark, but I was hoping for something very simple; light on, light off. – K7AAY Nov 17 '15 at 13:27
  • There is a reasonably simple application called wmhdplop which might need some massaging to suit your needs? A little more than a blinking light I am afraid... – andrew.46 Feb 20 '16 at 09:10
  • @andrew.46 you are correct, much wore than wanted. TY anyway. – K7AAY Feb 21 '16 at 09:27
  • In absence of a suitable applet being found conky has a set of variable that you could use that show HDD activity. Graphical usage is shown with ${diskiograph } while the raw numbers of input and output can be seen with ${diskio}. Otherwise I am out of ideas :) – andrew.46 Feb 23 '16 at 07:19
  • PanelConky, AFAIK, uses the desktop. Need it on the Panel. – K7AAY Feb 24 '16 at 10:44
  • It is my suspicion that what you are after does not yet exist :( – andrew.46 Feb 25 '16 at 11:55

1 Answers1

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I have a proposal to use keyboard indicators instead. You can find Disk-Indicator program on GitHub: https://github.com/MeanEYE/Disk-Indicator . Download ZIP archive, unzip it somewhere. It needs to be compiled.
Its Makefile has a glitch though - it treats warnings as errors, so it won't compile right away. But if you edit the 4th string of the Makefile:

COMPILE_FLAGS=-Wall -pedantic -Werror -D _DEFAULT_SOURCE

and remove -Werror option from it, then it will compile properly. After editing it run make in the folder where this Makefile is located.

config.sample file contains the settings: which LED should be used (Scroll Lock is the default), which events to track and which drive should be used. Make a copy of this file and edit this copy as needed. For example, I copied it into .config and here's my setting:

led=x|scroll event=both device=sda

Small help file can be found on GitHub page or in the file README.md.
Now run the program:

./disk_indicator -c .config

If you insist on using the panel indicator or you have no LEDs on the keyboard, you can combine this program with an Indicator for Lock Keys which can be found here: https://launchpad.net/~tsbarnes/+archive/ubuntu/indicator-keylock . It places keyboard indicators on the panel and reacts to this Disk-Indicator program nicely. But it has a side effect - notifications on status change, which are annoying. These notifications can be suppressed - indicator developer provided the method. There's a hidden option to disable them:

gsettings set apps.indicators.keylock notifications false

Also system notifications can be disabled completely, as described here: How to disable system tray notifications in 14.04?
Indicator for Lock Keys is invisible by default, you should press Caps, and it will appear in the tray. Check the setting to show it always and switch to Scroll Lock tracking (both settings can be found in its Preferences).
Icon in the tray may seem not very bright. It is located in /usr/share/icons/hicolor/22x22/status/scroll-lock-on.png and can be edited easily with Gimp.

Community
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whtyger
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  • The ThinkPad x100e does not have LEDs in the keyboard. Nice idea, won't work. – K7AAY Feb 26 '16 at 04:15
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    Yikes! Who would have thought it! There's an indicator indicator-keylock which can be found here: https://launchpad.net/~tsbarnes/+archive/ubuntu/indicator-keylock . It places keyboard indicators on the panel and reacts to this Disk-Indicator program nicely. But it has a side effect - notifications on status change, which are annoying. Actually this indicator-keylock is a port of a Gnome indicator Lock Keys, which has an ability to disable notifications. Who knows, maybe the developer will be willing to add this preference also? Besides that all other indicators are desktop-related. – whtyger Feb 26 '16 at 09:34
  • Edit your answer to include this and I have 100 points for you. Thanks! – K7AAY Feb 27 '16 at 10:00
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    You are welcome. Perhaps, it's too late - bounty grace period is over. Nevertheless, I've contacted with the developer of this indicator. Maybe it is possible to alter the source slightly, or he would be willing to add this preference to his indicator. Depending on his reply I'll add new info to my answer. – whtyger Feb 27 '16 at 10:50
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    Suddenly I realized, that annoying notifications on status change plague only Ubuntu, in Lubuntu they may not be a problem as it uses another notification system. – whtyger Feb 28 '16 at 16:18
  • Will someone else please be so kind as to upvote this, so whtyger may get his re-ward? – K7AAY Mar 01 '16 at 04:00
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    I thought that approving the answer is triggering that. Or I'm wrong? – whtyger Mar 01 '16 at 07:00
  • I was wrong. https://askubuntu.com/help/bounty You got it. – K7AAY Mar 03 '16 at 00:13