[stone]

ok, figured out my exec permissions... i had to:

chmod 755 ~/Dropbox/tracking/tracking.sh
chmod 755 ~/Dropbox/tracking/isightcapture

i also modified the shell script so that instead of overwriting it would create new files and date-time stamp them. i figure its only like 30k every time it captures and dropbox gives me 2gig, i can run it for a long time and not have to worry.

[stone]

well for some reason the cron job does not fire the photo capture or the screen cap [see below]. it does the other text files, but not the photo. if i run the .sh from the command line, it works and does take a photo. so there's something the crontab needs to execute those lines.

what am i missing?
[i'm new to linux/osx command line]


also:
add this line to the .sh for a screencap
warning: file size is about 250k

screencapture -x ~/Dropbox/tracking/output/t${TDATE}_screencap.png

[iphown]

Originally Posted by vdub6127

* How do I make a cron job?

- Open a terminal
- Type: crontab -e
- This opens vi to edit the cron file. Press "i" to enter interactive mode
- Type or paste: 00,15,30,45 * * * * ~/Dropbox/tracking/tracking.sh >/dev/null 2>&1
(translation: run tracking.sh every 15 minutes, technically at :00 :15 :30: 45 on the hour, ignore error output)
- type :wq! to save and exit
- Type crontab -l at the terminal to verify your job was added

i went into terminal and type "crontab -e" then pressed enter and that pulled up a window then i typed "i" which just made the bottom of the window say "-INSERT-" nothing about any interactive mode. then i pasted the above and pressed enter but typing ":wq!" didnt save and exit, it just entered the text in the line below. it says "no crontab..." when i do "crontab -l" and press enter in terminal so i am clearly doing something wrong... do you have any advice as to how to get this working? i am not that familiar with command lines, sorry.
other question: whenever i turn on my mini 9 it ask for my computer password to use dropbox - if someone stole it they obviously wouldn't know my password and the file would not get updated to the dropbox, right? this might have to do with my dropbox being located on my sdhc card instead of ssd but i was just wondering if you guys got this as well. thanks

[jetkins]

Originally Posted by iphown

i went into terminal and type "crontab -e" then pressed enter and that pulled up a window then i typed "i" which just made the bottom of the window say "-INSERT-" nothing about any interactive mode. then i pasted the above and pressed enter but typing ":wq!" didnt save and exit, it just entered the text in the line below.

There's a step missing in those instructions: after you paste or type the text, you need to hit Esc to return vi to command mode before entering the :wq! to write and exit.

[AlienWarrior75]

HAHA!! This is awesome, well done dude

[stone]

FYI

the screencap and photo cap do not work with CRON. if you just execute the .sh manually it works, but the cron executes seems to run under slightly different premissions and it doesn't work. the photo cap doesnt even fire and the screencap returns a solid black image.

still working on a way to have it execute on a schedule. thinking launchd but i havent explored it yet.

[buddhaheadster]

I used Lingon to create a launchd job, which will also watch a folder for changes and will only trigger the job when it sees a change. I created an empty folder in my dropbox (where I will upload a blank file if I need to enable tracking) and set the launchd job to run every 5 minutes once triggered. Seems to be working great!

[buddhaheadster]

edit from my previous post. thought it was working, but checked the console and realized that the script needed a couple of edits. I used Lingon to make a new User Daemon that runs every 5 minutes. The launchd command is:

/Users/(osx login name)/Dropbox/tracking/tracking.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

and the script was modified as follows to get the paths correct and to eliminate the need to contact the dropbox servers at all:

USER_DB=/Users/(osx login name)/Dropbox/tracking

TRACKING_FILE=tracking.txt
TRACKING_ENABLED=$USER_DB/$TRACKING_FILE

TDATE=$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M)

if [ -f $TRACKING_ENABLED ]
then 

    # Dump IP/Airport info
    /sbin/ifconfig > $USER_DB/output/${TDATE}_Ifconfig.txt
    curl http://checkip.dyndns.org:8245/ > $USER_DB/output/${TDATE}_IP.txt
    /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I > $USER_DB/output/${TDATE}_airport.txt

    # Say cheese
    $USER_DB/isightcapture $USER_DB/output/${TDATE}_photo.jpg
fi

Now, instead of uploading a "tracking.txt" file containing the word "ture" in it to the Public directory, I just need to upload a file called "tracking.txt" to the tracking folder in my dropbox. It's not a big deal, but it got rid of a console error caused by the previous script trying to run the contents of the "tracking.txt" file in the command line (which could potentially be a vulnerability, as well).

This whole thing got me thinking...It would be pretty easy to set up another daemon to basically kill the user account and delete all of my personal files based on the same principal of a file moved into a "watch" folder in my dropbox...

[mittensthekitten]

buddhaheadster > I'm having a spot of trouble getting the launchd thing to work. Installed Lingon, did this:

- created a new user daemon,
- named it,
- added the /Users/kitten/Dropbox/badger/tracking.sh >/dev/null 2>&1 to ProgramArguments
- checked RunAtLoad
- changed StartInterval to 300 (5 minutes)

Nothing seems to happen, so not sure if I'm missing some settings or something. Do I have to reboot for the job to take effect?

When I test your script by running it manually through terminal it works just fine, creating all 5 files (added screenshot), but they don't show up unless I run the file manually.

Any suggestions? =)


EDIT: I've renamed the folders to something less conspicuous - folder is now /badger/, and script runs if mushroom.txt is present. Also, I've moved the webcam line above the other ones inside the IF statement, seems to make webcam pictures more consistent. Before I moved the line I only got webcam shots on half of the test runs, now it seems to work every time. Still can't get launchd to work, though.

[87vert]

subscribing to topic, im going to try it out tomorrow at work.