Gtk3 appIndicator - update icon/text without user input - pygtk

so I have a Python script that sync's files to my NAS every x minutes. I am trying to write an app indicator (ubuntu) to follow the process of the above script.
If I embed the indicator code into the script and use GLib.timeout_add(10, handler_timeout) then the indicator cannot be updated until sync is done - i.e see the layout below:
*
setupIndicator()
sync():
update app indicastor to say currently syncing
sync to nas - takes say 5mins
update app indicator - sync comlplete
GLib.timeout_add(30minutes, self.sync)
Gtk.main()
*
This is what I want to do but of course doesn't work like this. My trouble is I don't know where to go from here - how can I achieve this?

I think you need to put the NAS functionality into a thread and that thread is kicked off at each update.
The first/last thing the thread does is update the indicator to say busy/idle.
I've written an appindicator (Python 3, GTK+ 3) for Ubuntu called indicator-ppa-download-statistics, found here which implements a similar concept to what (I understand) you want. I'm not sure if you'd need to use the locking mechanism or the global flag which I've used in my instance, but at the very least a threaded approach will allow the NAS stuff to happen in the background without blocking the indicator being used by a user.

Related

Workaround to seeing data factory v2 debug runs

I realise normally a debug run is not visible in the data factory v2 UI after closing the browser window, however unfortunately I needed to restart my machine unexpectedly and it's a long running pipeline.
I thought maybe the runs might be available via powershell, but I haven't had any luck.
The pipeline is likely still running.
We do have external logging, however ideally I'd like to see how long each activity is taking as I'm load testing.
And more importantly I do not want to do another run until I'm sure it's finished.... notably I'll run it from a trigger next time (just in case!).
EDIT:
It looks like a sandbox id is used which is stored in the browser local storage and there appears to be undocumented API endpoints for gathering info using the sandbox id. But there doesn't appear to be a way of getting old sandbox id's so I'm probably out of luck.
There is a button for view all debug runs.
Taken from Microsoft documentation:
To view a historical view of debug runs or see a list of all active debug runs, you can go into the Monitor experience.

Is it possible to accurately log what applications the user has launched through the linux kernel?

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.

Creating an updater; replacing files that are in use?

I am trying to create an updater for a screenshot application I have.
I've done the main part of downloading the update, but I now need to find a way to rename the new file the same as the existing one -
e.g. "NewFile.exe" > "ScreenshotApp.exe".
Also, I don't want to add another .exe solely for updating, just for the purpose of keeping it light and portable.
Is there any way of renaming a file that's in use?
Perhaps telling Windows to rename it AS SOON AS the application has closed itself?
Option 1:
Have launcher which most likely you want update that will handle updating your application as well as launching.
Option 2:
Have external exe monitoring updates and updating your app.
Option 3:
Cretate batch file that will update your app whenever your done using it.
Option 3 is the one you are looking for but it is the worst. If anything goes wrong the app wont work and if user can live without it, they wont reinstall.
Option 2 is mostly used by bigger players. They either work all the time or are scheduled.
I would do option 3, it is much easier than you think, and if you want single exe, just make your app a dll, you can update it whenever you want but launcher will stay the same. That way you can handle any errors, and fix them if there is need for it.
Option 4 would be to run installer with fresh update that will close app install update. That solution is better to buy. For $250 you can get neat stuff where it would take you a lot man hours to o something even remotely close.

inittab respawn of Node.js too fast

So I am trying to keep my Node server on a embedded computer running when it is out in the field. This lead me to leveraging inittab's respawn action. Here is the file I added to inittab:
node:5:respawn:node /path/to/node/files &
I know for a fact that when I startup this node application from command line, it does not get to the bottom of the main body and console.log "done" until a good 2-3 seconds after I issue the command.
So I feel like in that 2-3 second window the OS just keeps firing off respawns of the node app. I see in the error logs too in fact that the kernel ends up killing off a bunch of node processes because its running out of memory and stuff... plus I do get the 'node' process respawning too fast will suspend for 5 minutes message too.
I tried wrapping this in a script, dint work. I know I can use crontab but thats every minute... am I doing something wrong? or should I have a different approach all together?
Any and all advice is welcome!
TIA
Surely too late for you, but in case someone else finds such a problem: try removing the & from the command invocation.
What happens is that when the command goes to the background (thanks to the &), the parent (init) sees that it exited, and respawns it. Result: a storm of new instantations of your command.
Worse, you mention embedded, so I guess you are using busybox, whose init won't rate-limit the respawning - as would other implementations. So the respawning will only end when the system is out of memory.
inittab is overkill for this. I found out what I need is a process monitor. I found one that is lightweight and effective; it has some good reports of working great out in the field. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_control_daemon
Using this would entail configuring this daemon to start and monitor your Node.js application for you.
That is a solution that works from the OS side.
Another way to do it is as follows. So if you are trying to keep Node.js running like I was, there are several modules written meant to keep other Node.js apps running. To mention a couple there are forever and respawn. I chose to use respawn.
This method entails starting one app written in Node.js that uses the respawn module to start and monitor the actual Node.js app you were interested in keeping running anyway.
Of course the downside of this is that if the Node.js engine (V8) goes down altogether then both your monitoring and monitored process will go down with it :-(. But its better than nothing!
PCD would be the ideal option. It would go down probably only if the OS goes down, and if the OS goes down then hope fully one has a watchdog in place to reboot the device/hardware.
Niko

App launch sequencer

Every morning when I get into work I launch about a dozen apps and whatnot (FF, TB, VSx2-3, Eclipse, SSH, SVN update x2-3). Needles to say this does a good job of warming up my HDD for the day. I rather suspect that it would run a lot faster if they were launched sequentially (not to mention that I wouldn't need to click in 17 different places).
Is there a preexisting product that can kick off a sequence of tasks/apps/etc. where each task is only started after the last app is done hammering the HDD?
It would nerd to be able to kick apps like VS and firefox and also be able to trigger explorer context menu items like SVN update in TortoiseSVN.
Try SlickRun, it's free, I've used it for years, I use it constantly and I'd be lost without it.
Think of it like a configurable Start->Run command, it'll do what you want (you can configure n second pauses between multiple commands), and if you install it you'll use it for a thousand different things before the first week is out.
P.S. I have no stake in SlickRun, I just like it :)
Unfortunately, I don't know of any software that can do this for you automatically.
However, can't you trigger the updates through a console SVN task? If so, can't this be done by creating a batch file? It's low tech, and you might want to add a few pauses between each task, but it should do what you want.
As you mention TortoiseSVN, I'll assume your O/S is windows.
You could launch an Autohotkey script at startup. I don't think it can easily detect HDD activity, but you can at least wait until each window appears with the WinWaitActive command.
If each application has an average time they take to complete, you could simply use Windows' Scheduled Tasks application. Obviously you'll need to be running Windows but Scheduled Tasks can be found in the Control Panel.
Execute "Add Schedules Task", select the program, the frequency and then the specific time.