Automated screenshot script.

senectus · Guru Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 534

I have an idea for a script.. thats way beyond my capabilaties as a scripter.. but would be a nice thing to have :-)

I want a script that runs at say, 3 am every morning and does this (in this order):

turn off screen saver
minimize everything on the desktop
Take a screen shot
Uploads the screen shot up to an ftp site overwriting the last one.

Any chance someone out there is bored enough to make an e-build for this? I't make a nice addition to my sig ;-)

EDIT: Come to think of it.. if it gave you the choice of if you wanted to minimize or not and at what time you wanted the screen shot.. yeah.. lots of variables :-D

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christer75 · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2004 Posts: 64

Come on, take this opportunity to learn how to write scripts yourself instead. Its not hard, and its a lot of fun to have achieved something on your own.

senectus · Guru Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 534

lbrtuk · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 910

I think it would be better if it randomly took a shot sometime during the day. This way we could catch you looking at lederhosen porn.

senectus · Guru Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 534

lbrtuk · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 910

http://wabashweb.com/germany/week8/mon-lederhosen-large.jpg
http://linguistics.arizona.edu/~carnie/Media/leder.gif
http://travel.canoe.ca/TravelEuropeImages/germany_ski4.jpg

senectus · Guru Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 534

christer75 · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2004 Posts: 64

And I would prefer girls instead of men in leather.... maybe thats just me.

senectus · Guru Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 534

Can someone point me in the direction of a good scripting howto site??

something for n00bs would be nice..

oh and no more sites with fat germans please ;-)

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spb · Posted: Mon May 10, 2004 2:47 pm Post subject:

lbrtuk · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 910

In all seriousness, this is quite easy.

Assuming you're using xscreensaver.

All you would have to do is point your crontab to do a script during the night.

That script would only contain a few commands.

1. deactivate screensaver.
2. sleep for a couple of seconds. (to give the screensaver a chance)
3. take a screenshot.
4. upload it.

Now the way I suggest doing it is something along the lines of:

Jeremy_Z · l33t Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 671 Location: Shanghai

can you store the passwd crypted maybe ?
but in order to have it secure you can also configure your ftp server in order to restrict this user to uploading screenshots. (if you have admin control on it obviously)

BlackEdder · Posted: Mon May 10, 2004 5:03 pm Post subject:

To use ftp in a script I use:
ftp <<**
open your.server.nl
cd /screenshot
send screenshot.jpg
bye
**

then you make a .netrc thats only readable by the user self (else ftp won't accept it)
-rw------- 1 user group 61 Jul 9 2003 .netrc
with:
machine your.server.nl
login yourlogin
password yourpassword

because the .netrc is only readable by the user self it's a bit secure

christer75 · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2004 Posts: 64

Hmm interesting. Would it be possible to encrypt the password with the same algorithm linux uses to encrypt login passwords?

BlackEdder · Posted: Mon May 10, 2004 6:33 pm Post subject:

Anyone knows if ftp passwords are sen encrypted over the network? or just plain text?

christer75 · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2004 Posts: 64

Plain text. Use SSH if you dont trust people on your LAN.

Emerge tcpdump and try a telnet session. Its fun and you'll see what I mean.

BlackEdder · Posted: Mon May 10, 2004 6:47 pm Post subject:

Well if it's plain text then I don't really see the point in encrypting .netrc

christer75 · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2004 Posts: 64

Its good if someone gets access to your computer. =)

lbrtuk · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 910

Just though about this it might be nice to emerge optipng (like pngcrush only better) to be nice to the people downloading the image.

So basically what I would end up doing is this:

(yes I know I'm putting the password in the script, but it's just for simplicity. Anyway, what's to say you can't make the script only readable by the user running it? In this case the security would be the same as use of .netrc)

Before anything emerge optipng.

Rainmaker · Posted: Mon May 10, 2004 11:15 pm Post subject:

Just chmod 0700 the file, and than add it to your personal cron (otherwise cron won't be able to run it)

crontab
0 3 * * * /home/myname/thenameofmyfantasticftpuploadscreenshotscript

This script will then run at 3 am every night
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lbrtuk · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 910

Just for the record, if you want to deactivate a kde screensaver from the command line, you just have to make a simple dcop call.

sapphirecat · Guru Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 376

The truly paranoid will reactivate the screensaver afterwards.

lbrtuk · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 910

The way you were stopping the screensaver is actually killing the screensaver daemon. The previous two methods I mentioned don't actually kill the screensaver, they just activate hooks in the screensaver that make it think a mouse has been moved or a key pressed. So they don't need to be restarted.

Re the png thing: didn't know that. interesting. Still, optipng can crush the png smaller than imagemagick ever could.

sapphirecat · Guru Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 376

lbrtuk · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 910

Ah, I see. Different design.

Anyone know how screensavers work in gnome? We could make this comprehensive while we're at it.