Auralization of process and port status using program binaries to generate semantically meaningful non-fatiguing noise as canonical sound signals

Abstract

We describe using auralization to monitor process stack and netstat status on a server or small group of servers. Using the auditory channel is especially useful for monitoring because it can be done without taking much attention. Our contribution is to suggest generating noise-like sounds that more naturally fade into the background, and are less fatiguing over long monitoring sessions. Although our noises are not musically or tonally interesting, they are nevertheless semantically identifiable and succeed in indicating changes of state.