Automatically starting script in foreground on headless debian - linux

Does anyone know any way of doing this? The help would be greatly appreciated, I've been beating my head over this one for a while now, and I can't seem to find any way to get scripts to auto-start and display in the foreground as they would if I had manually started them.
what i want to do is basically just power on the vm, let it boot, then watch the script run and echo results to the console or whatever the script would normally display if ran manually
I've been able to use Cron and systemd to run the script I would like to run at startup, but I cannot figure out any way to get these scripts to run in the screen, as they would if I had typed ./startup_script.sh
i am currently testing everything in a headless Debian 11 vm. Auto login as root is already enabled. i just need to complete this last step but i don't know how to do.

You can fire up a tmux session and send keys it to start a script like this:
tsid="session_name"
my_script="/home/script.sh"
# create new tmux session
tmux new-session -d -s ${tsid}
# launch the script in the tmux session
echo "launching script in a tmux session called ${tsid}"
tmux send-keys -t ${tsid} "${$my_script}" 'C-m'
I do something similar to start a "quad-pane" to my raspberry pi devices. I can send commands to each pane via ssh without looking at the screen I am sending commands to. I can send commands to the panes from any ssh session without actually connecting to a gui, or being in the "session". This way, another machine can have that session up on a monitoring display and I can momentarily ssh over a command to the host and it will show over there without ever actually connecting to the window. The panes can run scripts and and have the output on the each respective screen/pane waiting for me to connect later and look at it. Every now and then I'll pull up my quad feed to see what's happening... then disconnect and leave it all running.
# function to send an arbitrary command to a tmux pane
# arg1: full id of pane, e.g. "pi4-host01:quad-feed.0"
# arg2+ command(s) to send to pane
tmux_send_command_to_pane_id() {
local tpid cmd
tpid="${1:-0}"
cmd="${#}"
echo "cmd to send to pane: ${tpid}: ${cmd}"
tmux send-keys -t "${tpid}" "${cmd}" 'C-m'
}
If you pair something like this with cron or systemd, i'd imagine you could get to your goal relatively quick. It does depend on installing tmux. I know others use screen, but I have become a fan of tmux for whatever reason.
A nice answer on systemd scripts here -> https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/47715/376937
Here is another question that may help as well:
Tmux command to run shell command on active pane?

Related

Linux how to launch visible terminal with script file automatically at startup

I have seen many ways to launch a script like putting it in profile.D, rc.local, or creating a auto start file but none of those launch the file in a visible window if at all. I need it to be in a visible window in Ubuntu. I need to do this because I am using several emulators to stream to different services, and I don't want to have to start the script on each manually.
I am using visual box for the emulator. The sh file is on a removable drive because it is an external file. I also need it to run as sudo.
Edit: I don't actually need it to run at startup. I just need to have the script run. I can probably just sleep really long for graphic to load.
Edit 2: So I created a service that launched a sh file in /usr/bin/ which was supposed to create a gnome-terminal window that ran my script. It ran, however It didn't create a visible window for some reason. I then tried to specify a display which caused gnome to freak out. Dbus was not launching correctly. another question stated that gnome would not work because of how it was designed and stated to use konsole instead. Konsole also stated that it could not connect to a display, giving a QXcbConnection error. Konsole does not have an option to specify display. I don't know what else to try
Edit 3: So I did the thing in the comment. And the service works. However it only works after I run the file that the service runs in usr/bin manually after every restart. The important parts of the file:
#!/bin/bash
sleep 60
ufw disable
ssh nateguana#$(hostname) -X
xhost +
*launch Gnome**only works after file ran manually*
I have also tried exporting DISPLAY, and changing users with su. I have not tried importing SSHD, as another question said to do, as I think that is only for non local connections. I have also tried every single arrangement of commands possible. Xhost errors stating that it is unable to open display "".
You can use gnome-terminal -e <command> to spawn a new bash terminal which runs the command.
You could use something like
gnome-terminal -e /path/to/bashfile
Bear in mind, this will end the terminal after the bash scipt is done executing.
To avoid this,in a newline add $SHELL to the end of your bash script.
PS: the -e argument is deprecated and might be removed in later versions

How does screen command works in Linux

If a do screen in linux, and then ssh into some other machine, run a job there, detach from screen and disconnect the terminal. If i open the terminal again i can go that session and job is still running. I just want to know how internally this screen is working?
Detach does exactly what literally means.
It detaches the screen process from it's parent.
It means that his parent (your ssh session) will not inform his dependent/child process about its termination.
For more info this links could be useful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nohup
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/3886/difference-between-nohup-disown-and
After ssh and successful login use screen -S screen_name to generate screen, then new tab will open. Run your program and you may close it. To see your program running use: screen -r screen_name.

Keep SSH Sessions running after disconnection

I am using my laptop via shell terminal to log on school’s server to run a
Matlab session. The session will take about 10 hours and I want to close my
laptop, go home, have dinner, and re-engage the shell terminal to check the
progress of my Matlab session.
From this link I know I should use nohup nohup to keep my terminal alive,
but I meet the following problem. Here is a screenshot of my shell after I start
running Matlab session:
where a = cv000_29590 is the respond from the Matlab. It should keep running
until cv999999 and take about 10 hours.
The problem is, this shell is not interactive anymore. I can’t enter anymore
commands, that is, I have no where to enter nohup commend to keep my SSH
session alive.
It's not really possible after you've already started a session. But for new sessions you can do the following:
Add the following to the top of your .bash_profile:
if [ -z "${PS1}" ] ; then
return
fi
if [ "${TERM}" != "screen" ] ; then
export HOSTNAME
exec screen -xRR
fi
function new {
u=${1:-$USER}
test ${u} = ${USER} && screen -t ${u}#${HOSTNAME} || screen -t ${u}#${HOSTNAME} su --login ${u}
}
Put the following content into .screenrc:
escape ^bb
shell -$SHELL
termcapinfo xterm ti#:te#
hardstatus lastline "%-Lw[%n%f %t]%+Lw%<"
screen -t ${USER}#${HOSTNAME}
These are mostly my own customizations of screen. The most important of which is that I set the screen escape character to CTRL-b instead of the default CTRL-a so I can still use CTRL-a in bash to go to the beginning of a line.
Use CTRL-b c to create shells in new windows (or just type new at the bash prompt to use the function). And use CTRL-b d to detach your session and leave it running. Next time you login, you'll be reattached to your session and everything will be as it was. Use CTRL-b n to cycle through the windows you've created. If you don't want to multiple windows, you don't have to, just use the ability to leave a session running and reattach later.

Linux KDE Login Script

I've been trying to set up a server that I want to run when I log in (in case the computer crashes or anything like that).
The script works and it runs on log in but it runs in the background or something as when I use ps -A I can see the process running. This is ok but the server is interactive so I want it to start in a terminal window and keep that window open after the user is logged in so that commands can be issued to the server. Is there a way of doing this?
What about starting your script like:
xterm -e YOURSCRIPT
Or if you prefer to use KDE's konsole:
konsole -e YOURSCRIPT
Those open a terminal window to run the specified command after -e.
HTH

SSH connection - run program -> howto to keep program running when the ssh-connection is closed

In short:
What is the most elegant solution to keep a perl/python/R/etc script/program running on a server (connected via ssh) when the remote server connection is closed (shell-window closed)?
In detail:
I have written some scripts that will run several days on our server. However, after connecting to the server via SSH over a linux-shell, starting the program and closing the window will also kill the program - OK, thats not new. But, how must the Server be configured to keep the program running after the ssh-connection is closed?
"screen" can be one solution, hmm but for me that to much typing and sometime I forgot to start a screen session and start the program
Thanks for your advice!
Cheers,
Yeti
NOHUP - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nohup
ssh your_server
nohup nice perl your_script &
exit
if you see the man page of ssh you can find an example below the "-n" option.
ssh -n <user>#<server> <cmd> &
In the hope that someone else might find this question and find this information useful, there is an application called "screen" out there that can also let you achieve this.
Most distributions should have them in their repositories under the screen package name. If I wanted to make a screen, I would simply run screen -dmS screenName command and it would run the command in a different "screen", which can be accessed with screen -r screenName. You can detach from a screen at any time using CTRL+A+D.
I hope someone can benefit from this information, as it is useful when you'd like to run a process but also be able to review its output assuming it has any (which many of my applications do).

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