Tag: terminal

Making database changes to Drupal multi-sites

by Matt Danger on Dec.21, 2009, under Uncategorized

The company I work for hosts over 150 Drupal sites in a multi-site configuration and every so often I need to publish a change to the code that requires a database change. The large number of sites we host means that performing manual changes would require too much time and carries a chance of error. I’ve come up with a simple solution.

I first create a PHP script that bootstraps Drupal. Here is an example of a script that will rebuild the menu router tables.

// Bootstrap
require_once('includes/bootstrap.inc');
require_once('includes/common.inc');
drupal_bootstrap(DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL);
 
// Rebuild menus
menu_rebuild();
print 'Menu rebuild complete\n';

I name this script rebuild_menus.php and upload it to my Drupal directory. Then, I create a text file on my desktop that contains a list of all the Drupal websites. This is an abbreviated example:

http://example1.com
http://example2.com
http://example3.com
http://example4.com

Finally, I execute the script on all the sites by running the following command:

for url in `cat list.txt`; do echo "Running script on $url"; curl $url/rebuild_menus.php; echo; done

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Scripting Login Tasks in Mac OS X

by Matt Danger on Jan.21, 2009, under Mac OS X, terminal

Recently I wanted to configure some of our lab computers to automatically configure printers when a user logged on. While reading Apple’s documentation to find a solution I learned about the possible ways to script login procedures in Mac OS X 10.5.

Login Hooks

The first method of scripting a login action is the use of a Login Hook. A Login Hook is a script that is executed immediately after the user logs on but before other login processes are performed. The script runs as root and needs to be chmod’d +x to be made executable. This feature has existed in OS X for some time and is handy for some account specific tasks.

To configure OS X to run your script run the following command as root in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /path/to/script 

This modifies root’s login window properties in /var/root/Library/Preferences/. In Leopard login hooks do not work in any other user or system-wide com.apple.loginwindow preference file. I’m not sure if they did in previous versions.

More information about LoginHooks can be found on Apple’s developer site.

System Login Items (Deprecated)

SystemLoginItems was an old login script mechanism that has now been deprecated and will be removed in Snow Leopard. Scripts were executed when the Login Window was displayed and ran as root. When a user logged in the script died and was executed again as the user.

In Leopard SystemLoginItems behaves oddly. Applications do not launch upon login, instead they launch when the user logs out and attempt to run behind the Login Window.

Example usage of SystemLoginItems:

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SystemLoginItems AutoLaunchedApplicationDictionary -array-add '{ "Path" = "/path/to/script"; "Hide" = 0; }'

SystemLoginItems was not well documented by Apple and it’s believed Apple created them specifically for a few developers. Now that Launchd exists SystemLoginItems is no longer necessary, likely the reason it is to be removed.

A brief discussion of SystemLoginItems can be found in this MacEnterprise thread.

Global Login Items

GlobalLoginItems has superseded SystemLoginItems, and in some cases LoginHooks, as the best method for launching a login script. Unlike LoginHooks, a Global Login Item executes after all the login processes have completed and is meant for GUI applications. You can even configure whether you would like the application’s GUI to appear or not.

To configure a Global Login Item run the following command as root:

defaults write /Library/Preferences/loginwindow AutoLaunchedApplicationDictionary -array-add '{ "Path" = "/path/to/script"; "Hide" = "0"; }'

To remove the global login item either delete /Library/Preferences/loginwindow or run the following command as root:

defaults delete /Library/Preferences/loginwindow AutoLaunchedApplicationDictionary

Note that we are modifying the loginwindow.plist file and not the more popular com.apple.loginwindow.plist file. A reboot may also be required after deleting a global login item

More information about Login Items can be found in this Apple Technical Note.

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Adjust Mac OS X display brightness from the Terminal

by Matt Danger on Dec.17, 2008, under Mac OS X, Uncategorized

One of the classrooms I maintain is comprised of 2.4Ghz iMacs (MB323LL/A) that are dual booted with Windows XP and Mac OS X. Sometimes when the workstations are restarted from XP to OS X the display brightness gets changed to its dim power saver setting. This requires the user manually increase the display brightness by pressing the F2 key, which is inconvenient. I haven’t been able to determine the cause of this issue so I wanted to create a login hook to increases the brightness as a temporary fix.

OS X doesn’t ship with a command line utility that let’s you change display brightness. Fortunately, Nicholas Riley has written a utility that uses OS X frameworks to accomplish this quickly and easily. Here’s the code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <IOKit/graphics/IOGraphicsLib.h>
#include <ApplicationServices/ApplicationServices.h>
 
const int kMaxDisplays = 16;
const CFStringRef kDisplayBrightness = CFSTR(kIODisplayBrightnessKey);
const char *APP_NAME;
 
void errexit(const char *fmt, ...) {
  va_list ap;
  va_start(ap, fmt);
  fprintf(stderr, "%s: ", APP_NAME);
  vfprintf(stderr, fmt, ap);
  fprintf(stderr, "\n");
  exit(1);
}
 
void usage() {
  fprintf(stderr, "usage: %s [-m|-d display] [-v] <brightness>\n", APP_NAME);
  fprintf(stderr, "   or: %s -l [-v]\n", APP_NAME);
  exit(1);
}
 
int main(int argc, char * const argv[]) {
  APP_NAME = argv[0];
  if (argc == 1)
    usage();
 
  int verbose = 0;
  unsigned long displayToSet = 0;
  enum { ACTION_LIST, ACTION_SET_ALL, ACTION_SET_ONE } action = ACTION_SET_ALL;
  extern char *optarg;
  extern int optind;
  int ch;
 
  while ( (ch = getopt(argc, argv, "lmvd:")) != -1) {
    switch (ch) {
    case 'l':
      if (action == ACTION_SET_ONE) usage();
      action = ACTION_LIST;
      break;
    case 'v':
      verbose = 1;
      break;
    case 'm':
      if (action != ACTION_SET_ALL) usage();
      action = ACTION_SET_ONE;
      displayToSet = (unsigned long)CGMainDisplayID();
      break;
    case 'd':
      if (action != ACTION_SET_ALL) usage();
      action = ACTION_SET_ONE;
      errno = 0;
      displayToSet = strtoul(optarg, NULL, 0);
      if (errno == EINVAL || errno == ERANGE)
	errexit("display must be an integer index (0) or a hexadecimal ID (0x4270a80)");
      break;
    default: usage();
    }
  }
 
  argc -= optind;
  argv += optind;
 
  float brightness;
  if (action == ACTION_LIST) {
    if (argc > 0) usage();
  } else {
    if (argc != 1) usage();
 
    errno = 0;
    brightness = strtof(argv[0], NULL);
    if (errno == ERANGE)
      usage();
    if (brightness < 0 || brightness > 1)
      errexit("brightness must be between 0 and 1");
  }
 
  CGDirectDisplayID display[kMaxDisplays];
  CGDisplayCount numDisplays;
  CGDisplayErr err;
  err = CGGetActiveDisplayList(kMaxDisplays, display, &numDisplays);
  if (err != CGDisplayNoErr)
    errexit("cannot get list of displays (error %d)\n", err);
 
  CFWriteStreamRef stdoutStream = NULL;
  if (verbose) {
    CFURLRef devStdout =
      CFURLCreateWithFileSystemPath(NULL, CFSTR("/dev/stdout"),
				    kCFURLPOSIXPathStyle, false);
    stdoutStream = CFWriteStreamCreateWithFile(NULL, devStdout);
    if (stdoutStream == NULL)
      errexit("cannot create CFWriteStream for /dev/stdout");
    if (!CFWriteStreamOpen(stdoutStream))
      errexit("cannot open CFWriteStream for /dev/stdout");
  }								  
 
  for (CGDisplayCount i = 0; i < numDisplays; ++i) {
    CGDirectDisplayID dspy = display[i];
    CFDictionaryRef originalMode = CGDisplayCurrentMode(dspy);
    if (originalMode == NULL)
      continue;
 
    if (action == ACTION_LIST) {
      printf("display %d: ", i);
      if (CGMainDisplayID() == dspy)
	printf("main display, ");
      printf("ID 0x%x\n", (unsigned int)dspy);
      if (verbose) {
	CFStringRef error = NULL;
	CFPropertyListWriteToStream(originalMode, stdoutStream,
				    kCFPropertyListXMLFormat_v1_0, &error);
	if (error != NULL)
	  errexit("failed to write display info (%s)",
		  CFStringGetCStringPtr(error,
					CFStringGetFastestEncoding(error)));
      }
    }
 
    io_service_t service = CGDisplayIOServicePort(dspy);
    switch (action) {
    case ACTION_SET_ONE:
      if ((CGDirectDisplayID)displayToSet != dspy && displayToSet != i)
	continue;
    case ACTION_SET_ALL:
      err = IODisplaySetFloatParameter(service, kNilOptions, kDisplayBrightness,
				       brightness);
      if (err != kIOReturnSuccess) {
	fprintf(stderr,
		"%s: failed to set brightness of display 0x%x (error %d)",
		APP_NAME, (unsigned int)dspy, err);
	continue;
      }
      if (!verbose) continue;
    case ACTION_LIST:
      err = IODisplayGetFloatParameter(service, kNilOptions, kDisplayBrightness,
				       &brightness);
      if (err != kIOReturnSuccess) {
	fprintf(stderr,
		"%s: failed to get brightness of display 0x%x (error %d)",
		APP_NAME, (unsigned int)dspy, err);
	continue;
      }
      printf("display %d: brightness %f\n", i, brightness);
    }
  }
 
  return 0;
}

You can compile your own utility by saving this code to a file named brightness.c and doing:

gcc -std=c99 -o brightness brightness.c -framework IOKit -framework ApplicationServices

You can also download the precompiled binary.

You can create a login hook to automatically increase the brightness by chmoding the downloaded ‘brightness’ file to 755 and running the following command as root in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook "/path/to/brightness 1"

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