From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.1; Linux) Description of problem: Gnome, by default, doesn't monitor the console. Critical messages sent by syslog to * will not appear on screen. These can include emergency priority warnings notifying users about impending loss of data. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Log into Gnome 2.Have some kind of hardware failure, security incident, or other emergency level problem occur Actual Results: The user is given no notification of the problem or warning of the impending problem unless they specifically are aware of this issue and open a console. Expected Results: Gnome should monitor the console and pop up messages sent there. Additional info: This also effects other applications, eg, the write / wall commands (which are often used in scripts to warn users of relevant issues). KDE already gives the expected results. An example data loss scenerio would be an overheating hard disk. Emergency messages from the kernel are sent to the console. A user logged into a virtual terminal or KDE will be warned of errors reading the device. A user running Gnome will continue working as the hard drive overheats unless they were already aware a problem may occur.
Internal RFE bug #115119 has been entered; will be considered for future releases.
'Not causing loss of data' isn't a feature.