Do Know Evil - A Blog by Tyler Mulligan » GNOME

scp-notifications for GNOME and Ubuntu – Expanding on My Original Python Script

Tyler Mulligan — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:11:15 +0000

I’ve only been coding Python for ~12 hours total, so don’t expect this to be perfect. Knowing what I know about creating/testing other software and doing my best to scour through very light pynotify documentation, I’ve begun to build out this script to be more useful / portable / configurable. As the Version 0.6 indicates, I’m not quite at my goal yet and there is still more to learn to bring it up to that point.

I’m releasing this early on my blog just in case I caught any people yesterday who’ve been experimenting with my research / code so far. I’ll share it on github when I evolve it just a bit more.

Video of it in Action

#!/usr/bin/env python
#
# Title: scp-notifications
# Author: Tyler Mulligan (tyler@detrition.net)
# Date: 06/26/2010
# Version: 0.6
# Description:
# Used in combination with an event, such as an action or cronjob, this script
# will scp the latest file from a folder to your server.
#
# Optionally, it can copy the url to your clipboard and/or show a popup with a
# link to the file after succesfully uploading
#
# Orginally developed to be piped to from compiz screenshot tool
# http://interwebninja.com/videos/compiz-screenshot-piped-to-notification-daemon-for-upload.ogv
#
# The MIT License
#
# Copyright (c) 2010 Tyler Mulligan
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
# of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
# in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
# to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
# copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
# furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
# all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
# IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
# FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
# AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
# LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
# OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
# THE SOFTWARE
#
 
import pygtk
pygtk.require('2.0')
import pynotify
import gtk
import sys
import os
import subprocess
 
# Set Variables
#####################################
user = "user"
host = "server.com"
# All should have trailing slashes
lfolder = "/home/user/screenshots/"
hfolder = "/home/remote_user/screenshots/"
httplink = "http://"+host+"/screenshots/"
 
 
# Display
#####################################
t1 = 5000 # timeout for screenshot upload dialog
t2 = 3000 # timeout for screenshot preview
t3 = 7000 # timeout for link dialog
 
screenshot_preview = 1 # If using with the compiz screenshot plugin, you may want this
popup_link = 1 # another popup
copy_to_clipboard = 0 # automatically copy text to keyboard
 
# Position
#####################################
 
# Get screensize < < used for relative positioning
display = gtk.gdk.display_get_default()
screen = display.get_default_screen()
x = screen.get_width() - 1
y = screen.get_height() - 1
 
# 0 for Automatic Placement
"""
x1 = 0
y1 = 0
x2 = 0
y2 = 0
x3 = 0
y3 = 0
"""
# Define Relative Position (assuming top-right)
x1 = x-1
y1 = 12
x2 = x1
y2 = y1 + 100
x3 = x-1
y3 = 12
# Define Static (1920 puts it on my second monitor)
"""
x1 = 1919
y1 = 12
x2 = x1
y2 = y1 + 100
x3 = 1920
y3 = 12
"""
#####################################
 
def upload_cb(n, action):
    assert action == "upload" 
 
    subprocess.call(["scp", os.path.join(lfolder, f), '%s@%s:%s' % (user, host, hfolder)])
 
    # setup URL in 
    if copy_to_clipboard:
        clipboard = gtk.clipboard_get()
        clipboard.set_text(httplink + f)
        # make our data available to other applications
        clipboard.store()
 
    # Notification: Link for the clicking
    if popup_link:
        n3 = pynotify.Notification("Here is your link","" + httplink + f + "")
 
        helper = gtk.Button()
        icon = helper.render_icon(gtk.STOCK_DIALOG_INFO, gtk.ICON_SIZE_DIALOG)
        n3.set_icon_from_pixbuf(icon)
 
        n3.set_urgency(pynotify.URGENCY_NORMAL)
        if x3:
            n3.set_hint("x", x3)
        if y3:
            n3.set_hint("y", y3)
        n3.set_timeout(t3)
        n3.connect("closed",closen3_cb)
 
        if not n3.show():
            print "Failed to send notification"
            sys.exit(1)
 
        closen1_cb(n1)
        closen2_cb(n2)
 
    gtk.main_quit()
    sys.exit(1)
 
# Notification 1 was closed
def closen1_cb(n):
    n1.close()
    if screenshot_preview:
        n2.close()
    gtk.main_quit()
 
# Notification 2 was closed
def closen2_cb(n):
    n2.close()
    gtk.main_quit()
 
# Notification 2 was closed
def closen3_cb(n):
    n3.close()
    gtk.main_quit()
 
# The Ignore button was clicked
def ignore_cb(n, action):
    assert action == "ignore"
 
    closen1_cb(n1)
    closen2_cb(n2)
    gtk.main_quit()
 
# Main
def main():
    gtk.main()
 
# Init
if __name__ == '__main__':
    if not pynotify.init("Notifier 'scp' Option"):
        sys.exit(1)
 
    # Get latest file and build uri
    start = os.path.abspath(lfolder)
    f = max([(os.path.getmtime(os.path.join(start,p)),p)
         for p in os.listdir(start)])[1]
    uri = lfolder + f
 
    # Notification: Upload to Server
    n1 = pynotify.Notification("Upload to Server?","Copy the file '" + f + "' to the server?")
 
    helper = gtk.Button()
    icon = helper.render_icon(gtk.STOCK_DIALOG_QUESTION, gtk.ICON_SIZE_DIALOG)
    n1.set_icon_from_pixbuf(icon)
 
    n1.set_urgency(pynotify.URGENCY_NORMAL)
    if x1:
        n1.set_hint("x", x1)
    if y1:
        n1.set_hint("y", y1)
    n1.set_timeout(t1)
    n1.add_action("upload", "Yes, Upload", upload_cb)
    n1.add_action("ignore", "Ignore", ignore_cb)
    n1.connect("closed",closen1_cb)
 
    if not n1.show():
        print "Failed to send notification"
        sys.exit(1)
 
    # Notification: Screenshot Preview
    if screenshot_preview:
        n2 = pynotify.Notification("Screenshot Preview", "", uri)
        n2.set_urgency(pynotify.URGENCY_LOW)
        if x2:
            n2.set_hint("x", x2)
        if y2:
            n2.set_hint("y", y2)
        n2.set_timeout(t2)
        n2.connect("closed",closen2_cb)
 
        if not n2.show():
            print "Failed to send notification"
            sys.exit(1)
 
    main()

I also rigged up a quick gallery script to parse the incoming images http://interwebninja.com/screenshots/ — I used AutoGeneratingGallery for this.

Ubuntu Notifications (osd-notify) Sucks, notifications-daemon Rocks – Exploiting the Goodness with Compiz

Tyler Mulligan — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 04:47:40 +0000

Introduction

The long name for this blog used to be “Tyler Mulligan’s Tips and Tricks for Increasing your Efficiency“. I love finding ways to increase my efficiency and let computers do the work while I focus on more interests aspects of what the computer is providing me with. When I recognize an issue, I find a way to cut out time by streamlining the process for the most accurate repetition, like any programmer would/should/could.

I noticed myself taking a lot of screenshots with compiz’ built in screenshot tool (I can hold a hotkey and drag a box to take newspaper style clippings). This is very fast and simple, I highly recommend enabling this option and getting used to it. However, I don’t care much for clicking around on clunky websites to upload images.

This is where my adventure starts… when I find out a very useful feature was deprecated and not replaced in Ubuntu. I don’t use the new notification area, it has too much I don’t need, I never liked the behavior of these new osd-notify notifications which I found out now are even more worthless (sorry team).

Using Sane Notifications in Ubuntu

After reinstalling the GNOME default notifications system in Ubuntu I was able to use SANE notifications that actually… KICK ASS! I don’t understand how osd-notify is better than these which even comes with it’s own notification properties panel. Maybe it’s an under the hood thing…

Regardless, there is no doubt in my mind that notifications that you hover, can still slightly see but click through but cannot perform any actions, even a close, are just plan stupid and annoying..

Screenshot of the script I ended up writing using the “better” notification system to ask me if I want to upload the screenshot I just took to the server.

Linking the notifications

I linked the notifications the following way:

Python Script for Notification that Prompts for File Upload to Server

Knowing diddly squat about Python, I chugged forward with my classic notification popups that allow for interaction as it had the most activity around it and some examples available in /usr/share/doc/python-notify/examples/

I ended coming up with the following script thanks to some help from a few people in #python on irc.freenode.org

This is outside of the scope of this blogpost but this script assumes you have setup passwordless ssh to your server.

#!/usr/bin/env python
#
# Title: Notification 'scp' Option
# Author: Tyler Mulligan (tyler@detrition.net)
# Date: 06/25/2010
# Description:
# Used in combination with an event, such as an action or cron
# the latest file from a folder will be scped to your server and will copy
# the http location of the that file to your clipboard
#
# Orginally developed to be piped to from compiz screenshot tool
#
#
# The MIT License
#
# Copyright (c) 2010 Tyler Mulligan
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
# of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
# in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
# to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
# copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
# furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
# all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
# IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
# FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
# AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
# LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
# OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
# THE SOFTWARE
#
 
import pygtk
pygtk.require('2.0')
import gtk
import pynotify
import sys
import os
import subprocess
 
user = "user"
host = "server.com"
lfolder = "/home/user/screenshots/"
hfolder = "/home/remote_user/screenshots/"
httplink = "http://"+host+"/screenshots/"
timeout = 5000
 
# Set position
display = gtk.gdk.display_get_default()
screen = display.get_default_screen()
x = screen.get_width() - 1
y = screen.get_height() - 1
#x = 1919
#y = 12
 
def upload_cb(n, action):
    assert action == "upload"
 
    start = os.path.abspath(lfolder)
    f = max([(os.path.getmtime(os.path.join(start,x)),x)
          for x in os.listdir(start)])[1]
 
	# setup URL in clipboard
    clipboard = gtk.clipboard_get()
    clipboard.set_text(httplink + f)
    # make our data available to other applications
    clipboard.store()
 
    os.system('scp "%s" "%s@%s:%s"' % (lfolder + f, user, host, hfolder) ).wait()
 
    n.close()
    gtk.main_quit()
 
def ignore_cb(n, action):
    assert action == "ignore"
    n.close()
    gtk.main_quit()
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
    if not pynotify.init("Notifier 'scp' Option"):
        sys.exit(1)
 
	# Setup Popup
    n = pynotify.Notification("Upload to Server?")
    n.set_urgency(pynotify.URGENCY_NORMAL)
    n.set_timeout(timeout)                          
    n.set_category("device")
    n.add_action("upload", "Yes, Upload", upload_cb)
    n.add_action("ignore", "Ignore", ignore_cb)
 
    # Set position
    n.set_hint("x", x)
    n.set_hint("y", y)
 
    if not n.show():
        print "Failed to send notification"
        sys.exit(1)
 
    gtk.main()

edit: I updated the script with some position information — I love that I can put the notifications ANYWHERE on my screen. I also variablized the timeout.

edit 2: Here is a video of my improved script in action — I’ll post the source later

http://interwebninja.com/videos/compiz-screenshot-piped-to-notification-daemon-for-upload.ogv

Going Beyond

The Compiz example is just something that server my immediate needs. The possibilities are however endless. You can for example, link this script to a cron job asking you if you want to sync some other sort of file. Or perhaps you’d like to add multiple buttons to give yourself a folder / server choice.

Happy hacking

Reseting your system wide cursor theme in ubuntu

Tyler Mulligan — Wed, 12 May 2010 03:26:46 +0000

If you installed KDE in ubuntu (GNOME based), you may have noticed that when you log back into GNOME, you keep the KDE cursor theme. To fix this, use update-alternatives like so:

0025|z@zentury ~$ sudo update-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme
There are 7 choices for the alternative x-cursor-theme (providing /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme).
 
  Selection    Path                                     Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /etc/X11/cursors/oxy-white.theme          50        auto mode
  1            /etc/X11/cursors/core.theme               30        manual mode
  2            /etc/X11/cursors/handhelds.theme          20        manual mode
  3            /etc/X11/cursors/oxy-white.theme          50        manual mode
  4            /etc/X11/cursors/redglass.theme           20        manual mode
  5            /etc/X11/cursors/whiteglass.theme         20        manual mode
  6            /usr/share/icons/DMZ-Black/cursor.theme   30        manual mode
  7            /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White/cursor.theme   50        manual mode
 
Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:

press “7″ for the default

RabbitVCS is the new Nautilus SVN

Tyler Mulligan — Wed, 05 May 2010 01:59:14 +0000

I should have written about this months ago. Readers have replied to my previous post about nautilus svn, which I claimed to be the first that didn’t suck. This is the evolution of it, RabbitVCS (Version Control System), which aims to use the same intuitive, integrated gui for other version control systems, such as git (check the rabbitvcs roadmap for details on expected support for different versioning system.

credit to rabbitvcs for the screenshot

Packages for nautilus you wish were installed by default in ubuntu

Tyler Mulligan — Wed, 05 May 2010 01:46:27 +0000

Intro

Thanks to a tip I picked up at Tombuntu about nautilus, after following up on a trick to add files to mocp through nautilus scripts trackback link from Hilltop Yodler (great article), when doing a google search for GiS for nautilus-actions (apt-get install nautilus-actions). I learned about 3 kick ass additions to the nautilus menu. I realized Fedora Linux and Linux Mint had some of these in their context menus but didn’t make the connection to ubuntu until now.

On with the Show

sudo apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal nautilus-image-converter nautilus-gksu

for some kick ass options in the context (right click) menu of nautilus (your default file manager in ubuntu). For more information, check out the tombuntu article I linked above.

pkill nautilus

to restart nautilus and have the new packages in your context menu

If you’re interested in this, you’ll probably also like my article about nautilus-actions.

Make Screencasts in Ubuntu with gtk-recordmydesktop

Tyler Mulligan — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:43:38 +0000

Yeah, the name sounds cliche but man oh man is this app slick. Compared to some of the others I tried, this one _just_worked_ and had the options I needed, plus more.

sudo apt-get install gtk-recordmydesktop

You can select a specific window or an arbitrary area and it compresses to ogv automatically.

Here’s a quick video I recorded in seconds — http://z.nexuizninjaz.com/videos/nst.ogv

Inspecting GTK dialogs with Parasite

Tyler Mulligan — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:49:00 +0000

Parasite is a program much like Firebug, except this is for GTK based applications.

By opening a program with parasite enabled, you can literally click elements of the GUI to reveal their properties.

The installation is pretty simple, open a terminal, clone the git repo, compile install and run. I like to make a folder for software I checkout from SVN or Git in my home dir so I don’t get things all messy. You need git to clone, so if you don’t have it installed already:

$ sudo apt-get install git-core

Clone it:

$ mkdir ~/git_software && cd ~/git_software && git clone git://github.com/chipx86/gtkparasite

Compile and install it:

$ ./autogen.sh && make && sudo make install

I run 64bit, so I had to do the following command to get things working:

$ sudo cp /usr/local/lib/gtk-2.0 /usr/lib64/ -r

Try it out (prefix an application name with GTK_MODULES=gtkparasite):

$ GTK_MODULES=gtkparasite gedit

Reverting two Ubuntu features ‘removed’ in 9.04

Tyler Mulligan — Sat, 16 May 2009 17:29:09 +0000

Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 has many improvements on the prior release of Intrepid 8.10, however 2 things were removed that I didn’t agree with. They are pretty easy to change back so I wanted to share them with you all.

Update Notifier in system tray

I guess the idea behind this change was intended to make updates more obvious… but to power-users like myself, I consider it an annoyance. Every time I’d run apt-get, a “update yo shiz” window would pop up above my terminal and anger me. I’m not the stupid windows user Ubuntu’s starting to treat me like. I just don’t have time for updates that require a restart in the middle of the day when I’m trying to get some work done.

gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false

tip from launchpad

Ctrl+Alt+Backspace

This would classically restart X… but for some reason they removed this as well?!?! Whatever, here’s how to fix it.

sudo aptitude install dontzap && sudo dontzap –d

tip from Chris Johnston