May 20
Syncing saved games between Windows / Mac / Linux with Dropbox
So with steam coming out on the Mac and with the Humble Indie Bundle working on all three, there is a problem with keeping all of your saves in sync. Not any more. This is all thanks to dropbox.
What is dropbox?
Dropbox is a cross-platform application / website that keeps files in sync and gives you 2Gb of storage space for free. Â If you’re not a dropbox user already, you can sign up here.
Initial setup
The initial setup is the tricky part.  Fortunately you only need to install something (other than dropbox) on one system and only if you’re running Windows XP.
Windows XP
You’ll need to install junction to make the symlinks in Windows XP. Â In Vista and later you can use mklink
Linux / OSX
You’ll use the ln command
After you have installed your game you will need to move your save game directory into your dropbox and then link to it. Â For this example, I’ll be using Civ 4. Â In the examples below, I’m assuming you’ve already moved your files into Dropbox/games/
Windows
junction “C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier’s Civilization IV\replay” C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\My Dropbox\games\civ4″
OSX / Linux
ln -s ~/Documents/Sid\ Meier\’s\ Civilzation\ IV/replay ~/My\ Dropbox/games/civ4
Sep 25
Automatic backups with UDEV
I recently challenged myself to come up with a way to make udev automatically backup when you plug in a USB harddrive. I did all my testing with a USB stick drive, but since they both show up as block devices to the kernel, it shouldn’t matter.
UDEV Rules
To start with, we need to set up static naming for the storage device that you want to make into backup disk. Start by plugging in the disk. (Now I’m not using Gnome or KDE so I’m not sure what their automounter will do. So, you might have to find a way to exclude it from the automounter. We need to find out the “model” of the drive. My udev rules are pretty basic, and will work since most people don’t have more than one the same model of USB drive laying around that they would use. You can always modify the udev rules to work for you.
udevadm info -a -p /sys/block/sdc | grep model
Here we are looking at the block device sdc (which is what the kernel named it since we don’t have any udev rules yet). This could change depending on how many block devices you currently have. Now we take this information, and feed it into a udev rule. I created a file /etc/udev/rules.d/50-backup.rules The name isn’t really important, however, the number 50- is. That is the order in which it runs. We want that number to be less than 90 so that hal doesn’t run first. Inside that file, we have the following:
KERNEL==”sd?1″, SUBSYSTEM==”block”, ATTRS{model}==”MODEL GOES HERE”, SYMLINK+=”backup”, RUN+=”/usr/local/bin/backup.sh”
Replace “MODEL GOES HERE” with the output from the udevadm command
The backup script
Now we udev running our script /usr/local/bin/backup.sh we need to make that script
#!/bin/bash NOTIFYUSER="pcon" MAINDIR="/home/pcon/" BACKUPDIR="/mnt/backup" su $NOTIFYUSER alt-notify-send backup "Waiting for things to settle" 0 sleep 5 su $NOTIFYUSER alt-notify-send backup "Starting backup" 0 echo "$(date) - Mounting /dev/backup to $BACKUPDIR" > /tmp/backup.log mount /dev/backup $BACKUPDIR >> /tmp/backup.log 2>&1 echo "$(date) - Staring rsync of $MAINDIR to $BACKUPDIR" >> /tmp/backup.log rsync -arvuz --inplace --delete $MAINDIR $BACKUPDIR >> /tmp/backup.log 2>&1 echo "$(date) - Mounting /dev/backup to $BACKUPDIR" >> /tmp/backup.log umount $BACKUPDIR >> /tmp/backup.log 2>&1 su $NOTIFYUSER alt-notify-send backup "Backup completed" 0
We have a couple of things to setup here. First we need to create /mnt/backup as root, and fill out the other variables in the top of the script. Aslo, if we want notification in gnome, we need to make a notify-send work around. Put the following in /usr/local/bin/alt-notify-send
#!/bin/sh
user=`whoami`
pids=`pgrep -u $user gnome-panel`
title=$1
text=$2
timeout=$3
if [ -z "$title" ]; then
echo You need to give me a title >&2
exit 1
fi
if [ -z "$text" ]; then
text=$title
fi
if [ -z "$timeout" ]; then
timeout=60000
fi
for pid in $pids; do
# find DBUS session bus for this session
DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=`grep -z DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS \
/proc/$pid/environ | sed -e 's/DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=//'`
# use it
DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS \
notify-send -u low -t $timeout "$title" "$text"
done
Now chmod +x the two scripts, and everything should be good to go. You can download the scripts used in this post below:
- 50-backup.rules
- backup.sh
- alt-notify-send (Taken from here)
2 comments
Sep 18
External programs that update screen
Screen is a great tool, and it allows you do to alot of neat things. One of my favorites is binding commands to key strokes. So all you have to do is hit F5 and it will start something in the background. Such as a build command. The problem is, you either get no output, or you get spam all over your screen. Well I’ve finally found a way around that. The answer lies in ANSI Privacy Messages.
In your .screenrc, make sure you have a place that will show messages. If you start up screen and you see “New screen…” then you’ve got this. Next add your script to your .screenrc
bind -k k5 exec /home/pcon/bin/build_script.sh
Now everything in your screen is ready to go. Now, on to build_script.sh
#!/bin/bash
echo -n -e “\033^Starting Build\033\\”
# Do something here
echo -n -e “\033^Ending Build\033\\”
That’s it. Now your screen will display “Starting Build” and “Ending Build” on your display. If the stuff in between happens too fast, you may only see your last message. The key thing is that your message has to start with “\033^” and end with “\033\\” otherwise you’ll loose your cursor. And you have to have the -e on the echo so that it will interpret the octal codes correctly.
No commentsAug 31
irssi + mumbles == push notification goodness
One of the biggest problems with irssi is that if you run it on remote machine, it can be quite hard to get notifications. For the past couple of years, I’ve been running a plugin called fnotify that writes notifications to a file, then using another script I read that file and print it out with libnotify. There are a couple of problems with this:
- libnotify is ugly
- takes up diskspace if you don’t clear the queue
- requires you to either have the script, or remember the ridiculously long command
Well, these are things of the past. Thanks to mumbles!
First install mumbles from yum (or source) then install the irssi script. Make sure you change the growl_server and growl_password then you are good to go. The script has a dependency on Net::GrowlNotify in perl.
The script uses irssi config variables so you can use /SET growl_server or /SET growl_password to set your growl server/password without having to load/unload the script.
No commentsJun 12
DVD player with xsessions
I’ve come across the need to simply the dvd playing process. I’m having to set up a laptop to play a dvd and use a remote presenter control. Now in the past I’ve just been in charge of this setup, and haven’t had to worry about explaining how to start it up for others. This time, I need to make it as user friendly as possible. So, I’ve decided to do this with a couple of bash scripts and a couple of xsessions.
Goals
- Generic user with a generic password to hand to the person in charge
- Ability to play dvd stored locally. (Called presentation_dvd)
- Ability to play any dvd inserted.
- Require no user input except to choose presentation_dvd or dvd
Preperation
To get ready, we need to do a couple of things
- Create a presenter user
- Install xine and xine-lib-extras-freeworld
- Copy our presentation_dvd to an iso
dd if=/dev/dvd of=/home/presenter/presentation_dvd.iso
Xesssions
Xsessions are what defines your window manager. It’s what tells X11 what to run when you say Session->Gnome or Session->fluxbox. These files are stored in /usr/share/xsessions.
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Presentation_DVD
Comment=Start the presentation DVD
Exec=/usr/local/bin/presentation_dvd
Terminal=False[Window Manager]
SessionManaged=true
This is our file in /usr/share/xesssions/presentation_dvd.desktop We then create one in /usr/share/xesssions/dvd.desktop and replace presentation_dvd with dvd.
The Scripts
Our /usr/local/bin/presentation_dvd looks like this:
#!bin/bash
amixer set Master playback 100%
xine -f -g –no-splash dvd:/home/presenter/presentation_dvd.iso
This will turn the volume up to 100% and then start xine on the iso. To exit, just right click and say exit. This will take you back to the login screen.
Now to handle any dvd with the /usr/local/bin/dvd
#!/bin/bash
amixer set Master playback 100%
xine -f -g –no-splash dvd://
And the final touch, make them both executable
chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/dvd /usr/local/bin/presentation_dvd
NOTE: The xine parameter is dash dash no dash splash. The font I’m using doesn’t render two dashes well
Usage
From the login menu, choose your presenter user, and then choose the appropriate session at the bottom. Then type in the password. Like magic, everything should work.
Potential problems
If you don’t see your session in the list, you might have a typo in your xsession file
If one of the xine scripts don’t work, try logging into gnome and running the script from the command-line to see why.
No commentsApr 29
Salesforce.com and Subversion
From what I’ve been able to tell, there is no real version control built into Salesforce.com and this is a problem when pushing from a sandbox instance into a production instance. To fix this problem (at least until Salesforce does something), I think the best option is to use the Force.com plugin and the Subclipse plugin for Eclipse. With both of these in place, it should make version control a reality.
- Install Eclipse for your platform (it’s eclipse-platform if you are using Fedora)
- Install both the Force.com and Subclipse plugin (eclipse-subclipse)
- Add your Force.com project to Eclipse (Howto)
- Add your SVN repo to Eclipse. (Howto)
- Share your Force.com project (Right-click on Project name -> Team -> Share Project -> SVN -> Choose repo)
- Then after updating a file in the Force.com project, commit the update to SVN before deploying to the server ()
Now if you want to use this in another Eclipse instance then, you’ll want to do the first two steps to prepare your Eclipse environment. Then:
- Add the existing SVN repo to Eclipse (Howto)
- Right click on the Project Force.com -> Project Properties  and update the username / password
When using this in a collaborative setting, the following workflow should be followed whenever possible.
- Team -> Update
- Make changes to code
- Team -> Update
- Make changes to resolve collisions if needed
- Team -> Commit
- Force.com -> Deploy to Server
Apr 24
TF2 Server
Just setup a TF2 server following this article
In Fedora, you need to do the following as root before running any of the commands from the article
ln -s /usr/bin/gunzip /usr/bin/uncompress
Now. To figure out how the server.cfg
No commentsApr 21
Mutt and Lynx
So, in my time with mutt, I have grown to have a disdain for people that send HTML only email. And surprisingly, this happens alot! So, instead of trying to change the world, I’ve decided to just use mutt and lynx to my advantage and call it a day. Thanks to one of my co-workers for showing me how to do this.
At the end of your ~/.mailcap file, add the following
text/html; lynx -dump -width=78 -nolist %s | sed ’s/^Â Â //’; copiousoutput; needsterminal; nametemplate=%s.html
Then, in the ~/.muttrc add
auto_view text/x-vcard text/html text/enriched
And restart mutt. This will use lynx to render the email. You can substitute lynx for any text-based html browser you’d like.
No commentsMar 10
Boxee and AppleTV
- Prior to starting up the AppleTV or even unboxing it, get your patchstick ready by following these instructions
- Unbox and setup the AppleTV to your LAN.
- Then, navigate to the setup->general->updates and make sure you STOP the update if you can. The update won’t technically break anything, but there are some problems with the newest firmware. If you can stop it it’s better
- Insert your patchstick, and reboot the AppleTV

- Once it’s done open up your favorite terminal, and get ready to ssh to make sure that AppleTV can run any updates. The password is ‘frontrow‘
ssh frontrow@appletv
sudo bash -c ‘echo “127.0.0.1 mesu.apple.com” >> /etc/hosts’ - From the menu select ‘XBMC/Boxee’->Updates and select the non-alpha boxee
- Wait and wait some more
- Download the darwinx86 iso from here you can get a free login for this by following the links
- Mount it up on the loop back and scp the /usr/bin/vim and /sbin/mount_nfs to the AppleTV
- You will need to make sure you nfs export has the option insecure or the AppleTV won’t be able to mount it
- Reboot one last time. You can do this with ’sudo /sbin/reboot now’
- Choose boxee from the menu and launch it. There are a couple of known bugs with the latest firmware and boxee version.
- Boxee starts with a black screen. The only real ‘fix’ for that is to restart it a bunch until it starts up right.
- Boxee freezes on the menu. Remove the ‘/Users/frontrow/Library/Application Support/BOXEE/UserData/’ folder.
- For more information, go here
Feb 23
Reverse Alias in mutt
A need has arisen here recently for me to need to “change” the headers on an email, so I can tell two people at work apart. Both have their name in the email header the same. Let’s call them “John Doe.” So in order to tell them apart, I’ve added a reverse alias rule to mutt to handle this. First enable the use of them by using
set reverse_alias
Then set up the alias. This can be added to your alias file, or straight into your .muttrc
alias fake_john john_doe2@example.com (Fake John Doe)
Now all mail that comes in from john_doe2@example.com will show up as from “Fake John Doe” but the headers will remain the same, and no one is the wiser.
No comments
