Command-line desktop notifications on on Ubuntu Lucid

Solution 1:

It seems that notify-osd is the new Ubuntu notification daemon which can't do what I want, and notification-daemon is the one I need, the one which was the default in previous Ubuntu versions like Hardy. Here is how to install it and make it the default on Ubuntu Lucid:

$ sudo apt-get install notification-daemon
$ sudo perl -pi -e 's@^Exec=.*@Exec=/usr/lib/notification-daemon/notification-daemon@' /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.Notifications.service
$ sudo killall notify-osd

Optional:

$ sudo rm -f /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.Notifications.service.*

Now this works as intended:

$ notify-send -t 0 foo

To revert the changes run:

$ sudo apt-get install --reinstall notify-osd