Archive for September 2007

SUMming Up The Stats

I’m quite a fan of stats, checking my most viewed posts is a bit of an obsession of mine. On of my posts that continues to baffle me in how much activity it gets is my post about ubuntu root access. This post resulted in a friendly argument between me and a friend during class. At the time it was a quick and dirty post to try and prove to him that linux was far superior to windows (lol, j/k, only a friendly debate).

In response to that post so long ago I now want to post about SUM (Screenshots). SUM lets you control your boot settings, including your boot password, from a GUI. For anyone interested you can get SUM here, or if you use propensity you can import this .pa file.

SVN Error With Fix!

I have my own subversion repository, I use this to store my school work, personal data like my resume, and pretty much anything else I want to keep backups of or keep synced across all of my computers. The other day I was trying to do an svn up and I was getting the following error “Can’t find a temporary directory: Internal error“. With all my googling I found a lot of people that said that they had this error also but that the problem had fixed its self. This was no good for me since the posts I found seemed to be implying that the problem was on the side of the svn server, but since I ran my own svn server the problem was mine to fix.

Well it turns out that the problem was that my computer that runs the server had run out of space and the simple fix was to delete some old files I had. Just thought I would put this out there for anyone else having this problem.

Propensity v0.1.2.1906 — Now With an Icon! (shameless repost)

Due to an issue with wordpress I have been forced to repost this.

It has been about a week since I released Propensity into the wild for your feedback, I have gotten a fair bit of feedback and received a lot of help. You will also notice that I jumped from version 0.1.0.1772 to 0.1.2.1906 well version 0.1.1.xxxx was released as a limited demo but I have pushed forward to release version 0.1.2.190.

New to this version we have:

  • The ability to add your own programs to propensity (you can import them or manually add them)
  • A Propensity Icon
  • Cleaned up and much prettier terminal
  • And many other little features.

As always feedback is wanted and bugs can be emailed to earobinson+propensity@gmail.com.

Download Propensity Here
Download Propensity Source Here

Ubuntu forums propensity post can be found here

Screenshots below

From Propensity
From Propensity
From Propensity

Feeds seem to be broken

My feeds seem to be broken, This should have been published under Blog, nopeits just my Ubuntu Planet tag thats broken :(

Update: Its a wordpress issue you can get it fixed here

Propensity v0.1.2.1906 — Now With an Icon!

It has been about a week since I released Propensity into the wild for your feedback, I have gotten a fair bit of feedback and received a lot of help. You will also notice that I jumped from version 0.1.0.1772 to 0.1.2.1906 well version 0.1.1.xxxx was released as a limited demo but I have pushed forward to release version 0.1.2.190.

New to this version we have:

  • The ability to add your own programs to propensity (you can import them or manually add them)
  • A Propensity Icon
  • Cleaned up and much prettier terminal
  • And many other little features.

As always feedback is wanted and bugs can be emailed to earobinson+propensity@gmail.com.

Download Propensity Here
Download Propensity Source Here

Ubuntu forums propensity post can be found here

Screenshots below

From Propensity
From Propensity
From Propensity

Posting Source Code to Wordpress.com

The other day I tried to blog about the vte.terminal, and I had huge problems posting the source code. My problem was that despite how much I searched, and everything I tried, I could not keep the formatting and post the source code. The formatting was wrong when I used the <code> tags (The spaces where removed and in python that’s important).

It turns out that this was the most correct with the exception that befor you make your post you must go to Users then Your Profile and make sure “Use the visual rich editor when writing”
is unselected instead of [sourcecode language=’css’]…[/sourcecode] you are going to want to have [sourcecode language="css"]…[/sourcecode]

[sourcecode language="python"]#This
#is an example
#of what your source code will look like
x = True
if x:
print ‘hello world’[/sourcecode]

The source for this post can be found here.

Python vte.Terminal example

About a week ago while working on propensity, I was trying to add an impeded terminal into the program instead of just sending commands to an xterm. I quickly found out about the VTE Terminal Widget, this is the same widget used by the gnome-terminal. Now while I was able to find a great API, I was working in python not C and while I love API’s when I’m using a new feature I also find examples to be one of the best ways for me to learn, but even with all my google searching I found it really hard to find a simple python example of the VTE Terminal Widget. The good news is I now have a simple working example, its a basic gui that lets you enter a command and then that command will be run in a separate terminal window (I’m not exactly sure why I used two windows now that I think of it.)


An so without further ado here is the code (all GPL). Hope this helps someone in the future. You can download the code here, or view it below.

VirtualTerminal.py (This code could be used in your program)
[sourcecode language="python"]#!/usr/bin/env python
#
# VirtualTerminal.py
#
# Copyright 2007 Edward Andrew Robinson &lt;earobinson@gmail&gt;
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
#

# Imports
import os
import vte
import gtk
import time

class VirtualTerminal(vte.Terminal):
def __init__(self, log_file = None, history_length = 5, prompt_watch = {}, prompt_auto_reply = True, icon = None):
# Set up terminal
vte.Terminal.__init__(self)

self.history = []
self.history_length = history_length
self.icon = icon
self.last_row_logged = 0
self.log_file = log_file
self.prompt_auto_reply = prompt_auto_reply
self.prompt_watch = prompt_watch

self.connect(‘eof’, self.run_command_done_callback)
self.connect(‘child-exited’, self.run_command_done_callback)
self.connect(‘cursor-moved’, self.contents_changed_callback)

if False:
self.connect(‘char-size-changed’, self.activate_action, ‘char-size-changed’)
#self.connect(‘child-exited’, self.activate_action, ‘child-exited’)
self.connect(‘commit’, self.activate_action, ‘commit’)
self.connect(‘contents-changed’, self.activate_action, ‘contents-changed’)
#self.connect(‘cursor-moved’, self.activate_action, ‘cursor-moved’)
self.connect(‘decrease-font-size’, self.activate_action, ‘decrease-font-size’)
self.connect(‘deiconify-window’, self.activate_action, ‘deiconify-window’)
self.connect(‘emulation-changed’, self.activate_action, ‘emulation-changed’)
self.connect(‘encoding-changed’, self.activate_action, ‘encoding-changed’)
#self.connect(‘eof’, self.activate_action, ‘eof’)
self.connect(‘icon-title-changed’, self.activate_action, ‘icon-title-changed’)
self.connect(‘iconify-window’, self.activate_action, ‘iconify-window’)
self.connect(‘increase-font-size’, self.activate_action, ‘increase-font-size’)
self.connect(‘lower-window’, self.activate_action, ‘lower-window’)
self.connect(‘maximize-window’, self.activate_action, ‘maximize-window’)
self.connect(‘move-window’, self.activate_action, ‘move-window’)
self.connect(‘raise-window’, self.activate_action, ‘raise-window’)
self.connect(‘refresh-window’, self.activate_action, ‘refresh-window’)
self.connect(‘resize-window’, self.activate_action, ‘resize-window’)
self.connect(‘restore-window’, self.activate_action, ‘restore-window’)
self.connect(’selection-changed’, self.activate_action, ’selection-changed’)
self.connect(’status-line-changed’, self.activate_action, ’status-line-changed’)
self.connect(‘text-deleted’, self.activate_action, ‘text-deleted’)
self.connect(‘text-inserted’, self.activate_action, ‘text-inserted’)
self.connect(‘text-modified’, self.activate_action, ‘text-modified’)
self.connect(‘text-scrolled’, self.activate_action, ‘text-scrolled’)
self.connect(‘window-title-changed’, self.activate_action, ‘window-title-changed’)

def activate_action(self, action, string):
print ‘Action ‘ + action.get_name() + ‘ activated ‘ + str(string)

def capture_text(self,text,text2,text3,text4):
return True

def contents_changed_callback(self, terminal):
”’Gets the last line printed to the terminal, it will log
this line using self.log() (if the logger is on, and it will
also prompt this line using self.prompt() if the line needs
prompting”’
column,row = self.get_cursor_position()
if self.last_row_logged != row:
off = row-self.last_row_logged
text = self.get_text_range(row-off,0,row-1,-1,self.capture_text)
self.last_row_logged=row
text = text.strip()

# Log
self.log(text)

# Prompter
self.prompter()

def get_last_line(self):
terminal_text = self.get_text(self.capture_text)
terminal_text = terminal_text.split(‘\\\\n’)
ii = len(terminal_text) – 1
while terminal_text[ii] == ”:
ii = ii – 1
terminal_text = terminal_text[ii]

return terminal_text

def log(self, text):
”’if self.log_file is not None the the line will be logged to
self.log_file. This function also stors the info in self.histoy
if self.history_lenght &gt; 0”’
if self.log_file != None:
date_string = time.strftime(‘[%d %b %Y %H:%M:%S] ‘, time.localtime())
file = open(self.log_file, ‘a’)
file.write(date_string + text + ‘\\\\n’)
file.close

# Append to internal history
if self.history_length != 0:
if len(self.history) &gt;= self.history_length:
self.history.pop(0)
self.history.append(text)

def prompter(self):
last_line = self.get_last_line()
if last_line in self.prompt_watch:
if self.prompt_auto_reply == False:
message = ”
for ii in self.prompt_watch[last_line]:
message = message + self.history[self.history_length - 1 - ii]
if self.yes_no_question(message):
self.feed_child(‘Yes\\\\n’)
# TODO not sure why this is needed twice
self.feed_child(‘Yes\\\\n’)
else:
self.feed_child(‘No\\\\n’)
else:
self.feed_child(‘Yes\\\\n’)

def run_command(self, command_string):
”’run_command runs the command_string in the terminal. This
function will only return when self.thred_running is set to
True, this is done by run_command_done_callback”’
self.thread_running = True
spaces = ”
for ii in range(80 – len(command_string) – 2):
spaces = spaces + ‘ ‘
self.feed(‘$ ‘ + str(command_string) + spaces)
self.log(‘$ ‘ + str(command_string) + spaces)

command = command_string.split(‘ ‘)
pid = self.fork_command(command=command[0], argv=command, directory=os.getcwd())

while self.thread_running:
#time.sleep(.01)
gtk.main_iteration()

def run_command_done_callback(self, terminal):
”’When called this function sets the thread as done allowing
the run_command function to exit”’
#print ‘child done’
self.thread_running = False

def yes_no_question(self, message):
message = message.replace(‘\\\\n\\\\n’, ‘[NEWLINE][NEWLINE]‘).replace(‘\\\\n’, ”).replace(‘[NEWLINE]‘, ‘\\\\n’)

if message.find(‘?’) == -1:
message = message + ‘\\\\n\\\\nDo you want to continue?’

type=gtk.MESSAGE_QUESTION
if message.lower().find(‘warning’) != -1:
type=gtk.MESSAGE_WARNING

dialog = gtk.MessageDialog(parent=None, flags=0, type=type, buttons=gtk.BUTTONS_YES_NO, message_format=message)
dialog.set_icon(self.icon)
dialog.show_all()
responce = dialog.run()
dialog.destroy()

# Responce == yes
return responce == -8
[/sourcecode]

TestVirtualTerminal.py Used to actually make the GUIs, this is the program you should run.
[sourcecode language="python"]#!/usr/bin/env python
#
# TestVirtualTerminal.py
#
# Copyright 2007 Edward Andrew Robinson &lt;earobinson@gmail&gt;
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
#

import gtk

from VirtualTerminal import VirtualTerminal

class mainWindow(gtk.Window):
def __init__(self):
gtk.Window.__init__(self)
self.connect(‘destroy’, lambda w: gtk.main_quit())
self.set_default_size(400, 400)

self.button = gtk.Button(‘press me’)
self.button.connect(“clicked”, self.pressed_callback)

self.command_entry = gtk.Entry()
self.command_entry.set_text(‘python count.py’)
#self.command_entry.set_text(’sudo aptitude install gaim-encryption’)

vbox = gtk.VBox()

self.r = 0

self.add(vbox)

vbox.pack_start(self.command_entry, False)
vbox.pack_start(self.button, True)

self.myTerminal = terminal()

self.show_all()

gtk.main()

def pressed_callback(self, button):
print ‘presed’
column,row = self.myTerminal.terminal.get_cursor_position()
if self.r != row:
off = row-self.r
text = self.myTerminal.terminal.get_text_range(row-off,0,row-1,-1,self.capture_text)
self.r=row
text = text.strip()
print text
self.button.set_sensitive(False)
self.myTerminal.terminal.run_command(self.command_entry.get_text())
self.button.set_sensitive(True)
print ‘done’

def capture_text(self,text,text2,text3,text4):
return True

class terminal(gtk.Window):
def __init__(self):
gtk.Window.__init__(self)
#self.set_title(self.settings.application_name)
self.connect(‘destroy’, lambda w: gtk.main_quit())

self.terminal = VirtualTerminal()

#self.child_pid = self.terminal.fork_command()

self.add(self.terminal)
self.show_all()

mainWindow()[/sourcecode]

count.py A little test program but you can run any command you want
[sourcecode language="python"]#!/usr/bin/python

import time

print ‘0′

for ii in range (10):
time.sleep(1)
print ii + 1[/sourcecode]

A special thanks to Alberto Milone for all the help he provided me with for this.

Back to school!

Well its back to school for me on Monday.

Mixed feelings indeed.

Propensity – feedback wanted

I have been using ubuntu for quite some time, and I have ubuntu installed on 20+ computers at one time. I find myself always installing ubuntu on a different computer. One of the things that I always do is install some programs that don’t come stock with ubuntu like geany, or miro. At first I had a simple shell script that I ran that aptituded (lol) all the programs I wanted to install. But soon that was not enough because different computers had different uses and installing miro or gaim guifications on a work computer, or a computer that will be going back to a client is out of the question. Another thing I wanted was to updated the source.list file with new repositories cleanly. And so eventually that shell script involved into a python program.

I have spent a bit of my summer cleaning up that python program and the result is propensity (I looked for synonyms for aptitude) and now I figure its almost ready to be released into the public. I have uploaded both a deb file and the source to my website, and would love some feedback.

Some features that I would like to add before I release it are:

  • I would like propensity to generate a standalone shell script that could be used to standalone install the package
  • Icon
  • Splash screen
  • Ability to add your own programs and save them (so you can load them from a file at a later date) Thanks Ed
  • Documentation

To sum up you can get the deb file here, and the source here. Thanks for any feedback you have.

Update 01: I made a post to the ubuntu forums and posted a screenshot
Update 02: I have been dugg.
Update 03: Propensity has only been tested on feisty.