[ale] how do I - icon starts script starts 4 scripts

Thu Apr 18 11:08:00 EDT 2013

Actually, I misunderstood your question on that one. Those options do what I said on read, but I guess I missed the part where it didn't work without the read. Phil Turmel had the right answer. The disown command is a bash builtin, so you look in the bash docs for it. The called commands can do what they like with the signals bash sends, though. xterm seems to ignore the signal--I don't have the same problem when I start xterms in the background as you do with mate-terminal. I believe it may make a difference if you have job control enabled, but I'd have to read up to remember the details on that one. 

Scott 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Ron Frazier (ALE)" <atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> 
To: "Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts" <ale at ale.org> 
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2013 10:34:40 AM 
Subject: Re: [ale] how do I - icon starts script starts 4 scripts 

Hi Scott, 

Thanks again. I may have to try those additional read options or maybe the sleep command that Jim mentioned. Not sure how I'm going to proceed on that yet, but it's good to have some options. 

Sincerely, 

Ron 

On 4/17/2013 10:25 PM, Scott Plante wrote: 

You're very welcome. I'm glad my reply was helpful. 

In one of your other emails you were wondering about the # being used for comments and the shell for the start of the script. It goes to backwards compatibility. Way, way back in the day, the original Unix sh didn't have an option for that, so it was added as #! at the very start of the script. The original sh just ignored it as a comment so it didn't break earlier shells. 

The "read" command is a shell builtin, so you have to check bash man pages for it's options. It has a -t option for the number of seconds to wait for a response. So you could change your line to: 

read -t 30 junk 

and the script would end after 30 seconds if you didn't hit return. You could also add "-n 1" for a "press any key" functionality. 

Scott 

Sent from my tablet 

On Apr 17, 2013, at 9:35 PM, "Ron Frazier (ALE)" < atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com > wrote: 

<blockquote>

Scott, 

I want to thank you for the very detailed response you gave. This gave me enough information to solve the problem. I thought I'd share the solution in case others might benefit from it. What I think is useful, is the way I've stacked multiple scripts together and attached them to an icon. This can be handy whether you're mining or not. 

Here is a simplified version of the MINER1 script that runs the specific process for graphic card 1. There will be a MINER2, 3, and 4. 

#!/bin/bash -eu 
# script to start litecoin mining on the first graphic card 
cd ~/cgminer 
export -task-specific-stuff- 
./cgminer -lots-of-special-parameters-for-gpu1-only- 
echo "Press enter to continue." 
read junk 

I got the -eu part on the bash line from a book, which adds in some special error checking for bash. 
The last two lines force the script to pause before closing its window until you press enter. 

For MINER2, 3, and 4, I've temporarily commented out all lines except the last two, so I can use them for testing. 

Here is the START-MINERS script, which starts each individual miner script, in its own separate window, with it's own separate geometry and title. 

#!/bin/bash -eu 
# program to start all mining scripts 
cd ~/mining-scripts 
# commands to start the first miner 
mate-terminal --geometry=70x4+1800+100 -t "Miner 1" -e ./miner1 & 
# commands to start the second miner 
mate-terminal --geometry=70x4+1800+250 -t "Miner 2" -e ./miner2 & 
# commands to start the third miner 
mate-terminal --geometry=70x4+1800+400 -t "Miner 3" -e ./miner3 & 
# commands to start the fourth miner 
mate-terminal --geometry=70x4+1800+550 -t "Miner 4" -e ./miner4 & 
echo "Press enter to continue." 
read junk 

I have to use mate-terminal to activate Mint's terminal emulator. The --geometry option (mentioned by both you and Brian) sets the window size for each MINERx script as well as a location so they all stack up on the right of my monitor. The -t option specifies a unique title for each window. Each MINERx program is started with the "&" command (also mentioned by you and Brian) so the master script keeps on going without waiting. For some reason, I had to put the read command at the end of the START-MINERS script or the sub scripts never kick off. I have no idea why. 

I'd rather have a delay in the START-MINERS script so it would terminate without me pressing a key. I haven't found out how to do that. 

Finally, here's how I created an icon in GNOME to kick off the whole enchilada. 

Right click on the desktop, click create launcher, select type: application, name: Start Miners, command: mate-terminal -e /home/ron/mining-scripts/start-miners, click OK. 

Now, upon clicking this icon, it starts the start-miners script, which in turn starts MINER1, 2, 3, and 4, which in turn post 4 terminal windows on the screen and run the processes I want them to. 

Very cool. 

Thanks again for the help. 

Sincerely, 

Ron 

On 4/17/2013 3:36 PM, Scott Plante wrote: 
<blockquote>

(answers inline) 

> So, my first question is how do I set up a basic script file 
> with these commands in it. I can fill in all the details later. 
> 
> cd ~/cgminer 
> export ..... 
> ./cgminer ..... 

Yes, you can do that. You'll need to set the execute bit using "chmod +x miner1" or "chmod 755 miner1" or similar. 

Usually you'll want to put this as the first line of your script: 
#!/bin/bash 
But it's not strictly necessary. It comes into play usually when you're in one shell and the script is written for another, but it's a good habit to get into. 

> Also, how do I put comments in the file? 

bash and most Linux shells use # to start comments. Anything after the pound on a line is a comment. 

> Now, as I said, the command for each graphics card 
> is unique. So, I need to set up a MINER2, MINER3, 
> and MINER4 scripts, which are customized for the 
> individual graphics cards. 

Well, you could make one script that takes a parameter and use something like: 
if [ "$1" = 1 ]; then 
#miner1 specific commands... 
elif [ "$1" = 2 ]; then 
#miner2 specific commands... 
#and so on... 
elif [ "$1" = --all ] 
#I'll come back to this 
else 
echo "USAGE: $0 [--all|miner-num]" 1>&2; exit 1 
fi 

You could also use "case" instead of if/elif/else/fi and that might be cleaner. As always, there's more than one way to skin the cat. 

> Finally, I want to create a master script to start all the other 
> 4. Here's the trick. I want the master script to start each of 
> the sub scripts in its own window and continue executing 
> commands in the master script. I don't want the master 
> script to hang waiting for MINER1 to exit before executing 
> MINER2, and so forth. 
> 
> Let's say that the master script is called START-MINERS. 

Well, do you really need separate windows or do you just need parallel execution? Generally, you can use the ampersand (&) at the end of a line to run that command in the background. If the miner commands have output you want to view on the screen, you can start an xterm to open a window for each one. I use kde, so I tend to use konsole but for this purpose xterm will work or you can check the options for whatever terminal window you like to use. In the above script under "--all" where I said I'd come back to it, you could put: 

for miner in 1 2 3 4 
do 
xterm -e $0 $miner & 
done 

dollar-zero is the current script so you're re-running the current script once each for 1, 2, 3, 4. Although since it's just 4 you might just repeat the command four times instead. Or go the other way and have a config file that defines each miner instance, but that seems like a down-the-road enhancement. 

> Finally, I want to kick off the whole thing from one icon on 
> the desktop which triggers START-MINERS which triggers 
> MINER1, 2, 3, and 4. I don't care if the master script has a 
> terminal window left on the screen or not when it's done. 
> However, when it's finished, there should be 4 active terminal 
> windows on the screen mining on 4 separate graphics cards. 

In kde, you can right-click on the desktop, select "Create new->Link to application" and then fill in the boxes. I imagine you can do something similar in Gnome. 

> Even better, I'd like the windows to automatically size themselves 
> to a certain size and stack up all in a column on the monitor. Better 
> still, would be to have the whole thing auto start when booting. 

xterm and most X Windows programs accept certain standard options, which you can see by running "man X". In this case you can specify the size and location with "-geometry". So for example: 

xterm -geometry 80x30+10+10 -e $0 $miner & 

as the xterm command. You could just specify 4 (or however miner instances you have) separate xterm commands instead of the "for" loop, or you could also do math in the shell based on the miner number. That might be more trouble than it's worth, though. 

As to starting automatically on boot, you have the issue of needing to be logged in to start the xterms. You'd probably want to send the output to a log file for the actual miner commands, then when you login you could have a command that starts the xterms with "tail -f logfile" instead of actually running the miners directly. In this scenario you'd create an /etc/init.d script to start the actual miner processes. You probably want to see where you can get with the above before jumping into that. 

> If you can help me with all or part of this puzzle, 
> I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance. 
> 
> Sincerely, 
> 
> Ron 

Well, that should get you started anyway. I typed these commands mostly off the top of my head, so there may be some "miner" errors (ha ha). You will find the docs for the if/then/elif/else/fi and case/esac under "man bash". You can man xterm for details on other options. Reply with more specific questions as you get into it, if you need to. 

Scott 

-- 
Scott Plante, CTO 
Insight Systems, Inc. 
(+1) 404 873 0058 x104 
splante at insightsys.com 
http://zyross.com 

</blockquote>

</blockquote>

-- 

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier
770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
linuxdude AT techstarship.com 
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