I'd like to automate a very simple task.
All I'm doing is exporting projecting files from an application called "solmetric pv analyzer." But I need to do it about 100 times.
Not sure if this information will help, but in order to export the projects, I need to load them into the program and then File->export traces for entire system.
I'd use something like AutoHotKey, but the sizes of the files vary greatly, so the export time does as well and I don't want it to wait such a long time do to each file.
On top of that, I'm stuck on windows XP on a computer with limited processing power.
Windows XP SP2
1 GB RAM
Looking at the flow, if I had to do it - I would use Sikuli. It is quite user friendly and
automates anything you see on the screen. It uses image recognition to identify and control GUI components. It is useful when there is no easy access to a GUI's internal or source code.
And does fit well under your hardware requirements
Windows XP SP2 1 GB RAM
since it only needs about 200MB memory to start. Once you create your script, I'm sure that the execution will take even less than that.
Aiming at full answer - you can even schedule the execution of the scripts via PowerShell/batch files. Here are the CLI arguments that you can use:
usage:
Sikuli-IDE [--args <arguments>] [-h] [-r <sikuli-file>] [-s] [-t <sikuli-file>]
--args <arguments> specify the arguments passed to Jython's sys.argv
-h,--help print this help message
-r,--run <sikuli-file> run .sikuli or .skl file
-s,--stderr print runtime errors to stderr instead of popping up a message box
-t,--test <sikuli-file> run .sikuli as a unit test case with junit's text UI runner
Related
For a project I am working on I want to collect data of malware in a virtualbox for 30 seconds and then revert the VirtualBox back to its original state and repeat this process 500 times for 500 different malware links that I have in a txt file. Before I revert to the normal VirtualBox state, I want to collect data from a program that is monitoring that malware. What is the best way to do this?
Edit: I'd also like to point out that I have code to read the opcodes that are being used by the application. All I would like to do is automate this process for the virtualbox.
I am not aware of such a feature in virtualbox or vmware but you can always use third party tools to compare the state of the different parts (like registry) before and after the execution of malwares.
I heard Ashampoo unistaller is a great tool to do the job but personally never tested it before.
Another option is to use sanboxes like sandboxie or cuckoo sandbox to capture the changes.
Another option is to use online sandboxes like hybrid-analysis which is perfect for what you want to do.
Just keep in mind that most malwares use anti-VM techniques to prevent execution in VMs so you probably will not be able to capture all the features of the malwares.
Hope it helps.
Our client uses an automation software called ActiveBatch (by Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc.). They're currently using ActiveBatch v8 and is now on the the process of migrating the automated jobs to a newer ActiveBatch v11.
Most the jobs have no problems coping with the newer software and they're running OK as of this writing. However, there is one job that is unable to run, rather, initialize in the first place. This job runs OK on v8. Whenever this job is being run on v11, it produces an error message:
%ABAT-W-CREPRCERR, error creating batch process for job %1
Quite self-explanatory; means the process for the particular job was not created. As per checking the user manual, it stated that the job's log file might explain more why the error occurred. Problem is, the log file is not very helpful as it only show magic numbers shown below:

Further readings states that it's Byte Order Mark for UTF-8. I don't know much about this stuff but since the log file only contains those characters, I'm not sure they're helpful at all.
Another thing, if I run the job manually (running EXE via Windows Explorer), no problems will be encountered and it will be a success. The job by the way is a Power Builder 9 application.
My goal is to write to a file (that the user whenever the user launches an application, such as FireFox) and timestamp the event.
The tricky part is having to do this from the kernel (or a module loaded onto the kernel).
From the research I've done so far (sources listed below), the execve system call seemed the most viable. As it had the filename of the process it was handling which seemed like gold at the time, but I quickly learned that it wasn't as useful as I thought since this system call isn't limited to user-related operations.
So then I thought of using ps -ef as it listed all the current running processes and I would just have to filter through which ones were applications opened by the user.
But the issue with that method is that I would have to poll every X seconds so, it has the potential to miss something if the user launched and closed an application within the time that I didn't call ps -ef.
I've also realized that writing to a file would be a challenge as well, since you don't have access to the standard library from the kernel. So my guess for that would be making use of proc somehow to allow the user to actually access the information that I'm trying to log.
Basically I'm running out of leads and I'd greatly appreciate it if anyone could point me in the right direction.
Thanks.
Sources:
http://tldp.org/LDP/lkmpg/2.6/html/x978.html (not very recent)
https://0xax.gitbooks.io/linux-insides/content/SysCall/syscall-4.html
First, writing to a file or reading a real file from the kernel is a bad idea which is not used in the kernel. There is of course VFS files, like /sys/fs or /proc, but this is a special case and this is allowed.
See this article in Linux Journal,
"Driving Me Nuts - Things You Never Should Do in the Kernel" by Greg Kroach-Hrtman
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8110
Every new process that is created in Linux, adds an entry under /proc,
as /proc/pidNum, where pidNum is the Process ID of the new process.
You can find out the name of the new application which was invoked simply by
cat /proc/pidNum/cmdline.
So for example, if your crond daemon has pid 1336, then
$cat /proc/1336/cmdline
will give
cron
And there are ways to monitor adding entries to a folder in Linux.
I am wondering about where to start in building a test framework here.
I create a vb.net application to display the list of projects available. Allow user to select the project, time and date when test needs to get executed.
Once the user decides the time and task, I want my system to schedule a task onto a remote machine where the test execution would happen at the specified time.
I am stuck at point two. any pointers or question is much appreciated.
I use testcomplete for automation.
I want my system to schedule a task onto a remote machine where the test execution would happen at the specified time
There's a Windows Task Scheduler and associated API that supports scheduling tasks at specific times. The API is aimed at C++ programmers.
You could use the Task Scheduler Managed Wrapper available on CodePlex for easy interop with VB.Net.
The task to execute could be copied to a network drive so that it is accessible from the remote machine.
For point 2 you'll have to call TestComplete from the command line as per these instructions:
http://support.smartbear.com/viewarticle/55587/
You can also call TestExecute from the command line, it's a cut down version of Test Complete that will run your tests. Your license may or may not include that.
Did you also consider taking a look at Jenkins for scheduling your test runs?
I have a small VB .Net application that, among other things, attempts to substitute system wide typed text by the user(hotstrings concept). To achieve that, I have deployed 'ahk2exe' and 'AutoHotkeySC.bin' with my application and did the following:
When a user assignes a new 'hotstring':
Kill 'hotstring' exe script file if running
Append new hotstring to the script file (if non exist then create a new one)
Convert edited/new script file to exe (using ahk2exe)
Run the newly converted script exe
(somewhere there I also check if the hotstring has been already assigned)
However, I am not totally satisfied with this method for the following two main reasons:
The extra resources deployed with the application.
Lag: The time it takes for the system to kill the process and then restart it takes a minimum of 5 seconds on my fast computer and more on other computers. That amount of time is much more than the time it takes the user to assign the hotstring, minimize/close the window and then test his/her new hotstring. When the user does so initially with no success they will think the process failed. So this method is not very good for user experience.
So, I am looking for a different method or implementation. May be using keyboard hooks? Or maybe adding a .dll library that achieves the same. Are there any resources you know about that might help (free or commercial)? What is the best way to achieve my desired goal?
Many thanks for your help.
Implementing what Autohotkey does would be a pretty non trivial task.
But I'm pretty sure that AHK supports an "autoreload" option for scripts
googling "autohotkey auto reload" turned up several pages discussing that very concept. IF that worked, all you'd have to do is update the script file and that's it, AHK should automatically reload the script.