blink - Blinks keyboard LEDs for various purposes.

The programs blink(1) and blinkd(8) help you to count or to monitor things like incoming calls on your voice box or incoming faxes. E.g. they blink Scroll-Lock LED for incoming voice calls and Num-Lock LED for incoming faxes. Normally, all three LEDs (Num-Lock, Caps-Lock, and Scroll-Lock) are handled. The blink client will ask the blinkd server to blink the specified LED with the given rate.

On Debian GNU/Linux blinkd is started without any options from /etc/init.d/blinkd, unless the system administrator changed this. See blinkd(8) for more information. If you like to count something, e.g. incoming calls on your voice mailbox, incoming faxes in your spool or whatever, just write a script, that calls blink --numlockled --rate n for the first thing you like to count and blink --scrolllockled --rate m for the second thing you like to count and maybe blink --capslockled --rate l for the third. n, m and l are the current numbers of things you like to count.

-c --capslockled

Use the Caps-Lock LED. If none of the three LEDs is specified, no other rate value than zero is allowed.

-h --help

Gives a short help on the command line options and exit.

-m s --machine=s

Use the machine s, where the keyboard LEDs will blink.

-n --numlockled

Use the Num-Lock LED. If none of the three LEDs is specified, no other rate value than zero is allowed.

-r n --rate=n

Sets the blink rate to the given value n. This can be either a number between 0 and 29, inclusively, or either a + or a - character, incrementing or decrementing the current rate by one. If you specify any other rate than zero, you have also to specify an LED.

-s --scrolllockled

Use the Scroll-Lock LED. If none of the three LEDs is specified, no other rate value than zero is allowed.

-t n --tcp-port=n

Use the tcp port n on that the blinkd server waits.

-v --version

Give a short version information and exit.

An example for the use of blinkd with the vbox program (an ISDN answering machine) is provided in /usr/share/doc/blinkd/examples/standard.tcl. Another example for use with the mgetty fax program is provided in /usr/share/doc/blinkd/examples/new_fax.

Blinkd/blink is made by W. Borgert <debacle@debian.org>, as well as this manual page.

Copyright 1998-2001 W. Borgert and released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts.

A copy of the GNU Free Documentation License is available in this Debian package as /usr/share/doc/blinkd/copyright.

Anyone can contact the blinkd server. There is no security mechanism yet.

These programs seem to run at least on Debian GNU/Linux alpha, arm, i386, m68k, powerpc, and sparc. Please send me a mail, if it does run on other platforms or if you need something fixed for another platform.

Internationalization is just in the beginning. Contribute, if you like!

Please tell me about grammatical or spelling errors!

Version 0.4.6 released on 2003-01-26.

W. Borgert.