Run multiple new terminals from terminal - linux

I tried to find solution but I don't know how to do it.
I want to start terminal on raspberry pi x times, to run python scripts in paralel.
I tried gnome-terminal or xterm but nothing did what I wanted or wrote command not found.
This cmd:
#!/bin/bashint
for word in $(cat inputs.txt); do python3 enttest.py $word; done
This command gets every line from inputs.txt file and passes it as parameter to a python script which runs for x hours (one line, one parameter).
I need it to start x terminal based on how many lines there is in the inputs.txt file. I want this automatic because the inputs will be generated/dynamic. The script is very simple and I manually started 12 terminals which worked fine on slow raspberry.
Input file can look like this:
input1
input2
No crazy stuff with the inputs like space or special character. I will have more parameters in future in the input files but those can be separated by delimiter.
Thanks.

You can do that without starting new terminals. If you do this:
#!/bin/bashint
for word in $(cat inputs.txt)
do python3 enttest.py "$word" &
done
bash will execute the scripts in parrallel (it will create a new process for each call), due to the single ampersand (&) after the command.
So the program should execute rather quickly, and then the python3 enttest.py tasks will work in the background.
You can read more on that here : https://bashitout.com/2013/05/18/Ampersands-on-the-command-line.html

Related

How to execute a shell program taking inputs with python?

First of all, I'm using Ubuntu 20.04 and Python 3.8.
I would like to run a program that takes command line inputs. I managed to start the program from python with the os.system() command, but after starting the program it is impossible to send the inputs. The program in question is a product interface application that uses the CubeSat Space Protocol (CSP) as a language. However, the inputs used are encoded in a .c file with their corresponding .h header.
In the shell, it looks like this:
starting the program
In python, it looks like this:
import os
os.chdir('/home/augustin/workspaceGS/gs-sw-nanosoft-product-interface-application-2.5.1')
os.system('./waf')
os.system('./build/csp-client -k/dev/ttyUSB1')
os.system('cmp ident') #cmp ident is typically the kind of command that does not work on python
The output is the same as in the shell but without the "cmp ident output", that is to say it's impossible for me to use the csp-client#
As you can probably see, I'm a real beginner trying to be as clear and precise as possible. I can of course try to give more information if needed. Thanks for your help !
It sounds like the pexpect module might be what you're looking for rather than using os.system it's designed for controlling other applications and interacting with them like a human is using them. The documentation for it is available here. But what you want will probably look something like this:
import pexpect
p = pexpect.spawnu("/home/augustin/workspaceGS/gs-sw-nanosoft-product-interface-application-2.5.1/build/csp-client -k/dev/ttyUSB1")
p.expect("csp-client")
p.sendline("cmp indent")
print(p.read())
p.close()
I'll try and give you some hints to get you started - though bear in mind I do not know any of your tools, i.e. waf or csp-client, but hopefully that will not matter.
I'll number my points so you can refer to the steps easily.
Point 1
If waf is a build system, I wouldn't keep running that every time you want to run your csp-client. Just use waf to rebuild when you have changed your code - that should save time.
Point 2
When you change directory to /home/augustin/workspaceGS/gs-sw-nanosoft-product-interface-application-2.5.1 and then run ./build/csp-client you are effectively running:
/home/augustin/workspaceGS/gs-sw-nanosoft-product-interface-application-2.5.1/build/csp-client -k/dev/ttyUSB1
But that is rather annoying, so I would make a symbolic link to that that from /usr/local/bin so that you can run it just with:
csp-client -k/dev/ttyUSB1
So, I would make that symlink with:
ln -s /home/augustin/workspaceGS/gs-sw-nanosoft-product-interface-application-2.5.1/build/csp-client /usr/local/bin/csp-client
You MAY need to put sudo at the start of that command. Once you have that, you should be able to just run:
csp-client -k/dev/ttyUSB1
Point 3
Your Python code doesn't work because every os.system() starts a completely new shell, unrelated to the previous line or shell. And the shell that it starts then exits before your next os.system() command.
As a result, the cmp ident command never goes to the csp-client. You really need to send the cmp ident command on the stdin or "standard input" of csp-client. You can do that in Python, it is described here, but it's not all that easy for a beginner.
Instead of that, if you just have aa few limited commands you need to send, such as "take a picture", I would make and test complete bash scripts in the Terminal, till I got them right and then just call those from Python. So, I would make a bash script in your HOME directory called, say csp-snap and put something like this in it:
#/bin/bash
# Extend PATH so we can find "/usr/local/bin/csp-client"
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
{
# Tell client to take picture
echo "nanoncam snap"
# Exit csp-client
echo exit
} | csp-client -k/dev/ttyUSB1
Now make that executable (only necessary once) with:
chmod +x $HOME/csp-snap
And then you can test it with:
$HOME/csp-snap
If that works, you can copy the script to /usr/local/bin with:
cp $HOME/csp-snap /usr/local/bin
You may need sudo at the start again.
Then you should be able to take photos from anywhere just with:
csp-snap
Then your Python code becomes easy:
os.system('/usr/local/bin/csp-snap')

How to use xdotool to open a new tab, switch to it and run commands in it

I am trying to write a bash script to automate running some commands. However some of these commands should be running in their own terminal tab.
So I use the following in my bash script to open a new tab:
xdotool key ctrl+shift+t
this does the job, but the next commands in my bash script are still executed in the previous terminal tab.
How can I make the new opened terminal tab active and run the next commands in this tab?
What Terminal Emulator are you using? It strongly depends on this.
In general, you could write the commands you want to execute in a shell script and tell your terminal emulator to execute the script once it has started.
Example with xterm:
echo '#!/bin/bash' > /tmp/thescript
echo 'ls -la' >> /tmp/thescript
chmod +x /tmp/thescript
xterm -hold -e /tmp/thescript
EDIT: I just saw that u asked for a way to achieve this with xdotool. So this answer might be invalid. Please tell me if so - then i'll delete it.
How are you using xdotool? It can be done with a chain, for example:
$ xdotool key "ctrl+shift+t"; xdotool type "ls"; xdotool key Return
If all you want is to run the commands in the background / in parallel, without synchronously waiting for each command to complete before the next begins, terminate them with an ampersand & to instruct the shell to do so.
Alternatively, you can execute the commands in their own subshells by surrounding each with parentheses ( ). If they are long running processes or you do not wish to pollute the original shell with their output, you can fork them off and capture their output to file with something like (setsid command 1>/path/to/log &).
If separate tabs is necessary requirement, you can use xdotool to key the switch-to-the-next-tab binding or similar, and then key the commands you must run in that tab.
Instead of sorting out that mess yourself, you could use a script from this answer by Jacob Vlijm, which wraps a windowed approach that uses xdotool and wmctrl to 'send' commands to different terminal windows. The script is written in python 3 but it can easily be rewritten for a shell environment of choice.
A more direct approach involves use of a TIOCSTI ioctl to inject characters into another terminal. According to the tty_ioctl manual page:
NAME
ioctl_tty - ioctls for terminals and serial lines
...
DESCRIPTION
The ioctl(2) call for terminals and serial ports accepts many possible
command arguments.
...
Faking input
TIOCSTI const char *argp
Insert the given byte in the input queue
...
Here are c and perl wrappers, and an example in python as referenced by this answer.

Trigger a script when nohup process terminates

I have some fairly time consuming python scripts to run ~3 hours or so on my machine. I don't want to run them concurrently since it might crash my machine. Alone I have more than enough memory but running 5 or so might cause an issue. I am running them remotely so I ssh into my server and run them like this:
nohup python my_script.py > my_output.txt &
That way if my connection gets interrupted I can re-establish the connection and my result is right there. I want to run the same python script a couple times with different command line arguments sequentially so I can run everything I need without me needing to set up the next one every few hours. I could manually code all of the arguments into a python script and do it that way but it seems inelegant. I don't want to have to fiddle with my python script every time I do this. Is there some sort of listener I could use to trigger the next one when one of them finishes?
I'd suggest writing a bash script that runs the python jobs sequentially:
#!/bin/bash
python3 my_script1.py > my_output1.txt
python3 my_script2.py > my_output2.txt
Then nohup that:
nohup ./driver.sh &
You really want to read up on utilities like tmux or screen and just script the while thing.

gnome-terminal executes commands from file

I need an example of gnome-terminal command to read lines of text from a file and executes them one by one in different terminal or a tab.
So this would be the process. I would run gnome terminal command and it would read 10 commands from a file. Then it would execute those 10 commands in 10 different tabs/terminals. And of course those tabs/terminals would remain opened. I found this question Avoid gnome-terminal close after script execution?
The third answer from the top is very helpful. I managed to open 1 command from a file. But I need 1 file with 10 command lines to be opened like I wrote above.
Thanks.
I recommend to use screen for this, if that can be acceptable to you.
You could create a commands.screenrc file like this:
screen bash -c 'command1; echo press any key; read'
screen bash -c 'command2; bash'
screen mutt
screen emacs
screen
You can define as many programs as you want. Start screen with:
screen -c commands.screenrc
I don't know what kind of commands you want to run. If you want to see their output, then write like the first example above: execute the command in a bash shell, which will "pause" after the command was executed. Or the second line, which, after running the command will start another bash shell. Otherwise the screen window would exit automatically.
If you are not familiar with screen, you will need to learn some basic key strokes to get around, and to be able to switch between windows. The first few pages of this presentation should be enough to get you started.

What can I use to capture every command I run in bash (a-la history)

I know history will capture commands that I run, but it is shell specific. I work with multiple shells and multiple hosts and would like to write a small script which, after every command I run, dumps that command to some file along with the host name. This way, i can implement my own history command which reads from that file, and can take a host as an argument which would be handy for me. I'm not sure how to get the first part though..i.e., get every shell command I type to trigger a "dump that command into a file" part. Any ideas?
Thanks
In bash, the PROMPT_COMMAND environment variable contains a command that will be executed before the PS1 prompt is displayed. So yours could be something like history | tail -n1 | perl -npe 's/^\s+\d+\s+//' | yourcommand HOST
The script utility should solve your problem. It records everything you type and all that is printed on the terminal in a file (even including terminal control codes, so if you cat that file on the console, you even reproduce the original text colors).

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