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Tinypliny's Journal

tinypliny
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11/17/2011 08:14 #55531

All the pretty horses
Category: linux
sounds very much like all the running processes. Well, it does if you slur and clip the last sss.

All the running processes

ps aux | less

  • gives you the full command or name of the process, which you can then use to create keyboard shortcuts or just kill processes with their PID numbers
  • piping the ps aux to less makes the display not run amok on your screen and you can scroll the output with your keyboard

All the processes run by you

ps -u username

  • drawback is it doesn't give you the full command

Grepping for particular process.

ps aux | grep screen

  • simple, you pipe the ps aux through grep.
  • in the example above I was trying to search for what the screenshot utility was called. The output is below:


[user@comp ~]$ ps aux | grep screen
user 1527 0.0 0.1 429476 11664 ? Sl Nov14 0:11 gnome-screensaver
user 19804 0.0 0.1 415516 12696 ? Sl 07:54 0:00 gnome-screenshot --interactive
user 20066 0.0 0.0 109112 840 pts/0 S+ 08:07 0:00 grep --color=auto screen

The bolded text is what I was searching for.

HOWTO:
How to find the internal commands of the processes/programs/applications in linux. Can use these commands to assign keyboard shortcuts. Can use process IDs to kill applications/programs

11/16/2011 21:18 #55530

Buffalo General has a rooftop disco.
Category: buffalo
Or so it seems today.

l stare at this building everyday and I couldn't help but notice that they added another beacon light on its rooftop. It's almost like a discotheque now.

image

If you can't clearly see the gaudy three lights in the super crappy picture that my phone has taken, the new light starts off as yellow, slowly turns a dark bright orange and then dims to a low green. The older two lights were red and yellow. That's quite a spectrum there.

Did they receive complaints from the pilots of random helicopters that keep zooming around the place? Or maybe they are jazzing it up for thanksgiving. Or maybe its an alien spaceship sending signals that Buffalo is safe for landing?

11/16/2011 20:39 #55528

Arrgh. Google Bookmarks Lists
Category: i-tech
Back when Google introduced the Google Bookmarks Lists, I should not have jumped at it.



But I did. BIG mistake. Now ALL my zillion bookmarks are stuck in lists without ANY way of exporting them anywhere. The export-bookmarks function only works for bookmarks that are NOT in lists.

This is so annoying. I hate you, Google Bookmarks List makers. Haven't you ever heard of the data liberation front, your company's own sister concern????

Aaaaarrgh.

11/16/2011 14:12 #55525

Biological Science Journals need a reality check
Category: science
I read this article today (poorly written and not very informative. Don't bother reading).

Tchantchaleishvili V, Schmitto JD. Preparing a scientific manuscript in Linux: Today's possibilities and limitations. BMC research notes. 2011 Oct;4(1):434+. Available from: .

The table at the very end summarizes the format in which top biological sciences journals prefer to receive submissions.

  • New England Journal of Medicine(34) PDF*, DOC, WPD, TXT, RTF
  • Cell(37) DOC, RTF, TXT
  • The Lancet(38) DOC
  • JAMA(39) DOC, WPD
  • The Journal of Biological Chemistry(35) PDF***
  • Circulation(40) DOC, WPD
  • ===
  • Nature(29) DOC, TEX**
  • Science(30) DOC, TEX**, RTF*
  • PloS ONE(31) DOC, TEX, RTF
  • PNAS(32) DOC, RTF, TEX
  • BMC Journals (33) DOC, RTF, TEX

[* Some restrictions apply]
[** TEX files must be accompanied by a PDF version of the same text for visual reference 19 ]
[*** Although manuscripts must be submitted in PDF format, Microsoft Word is recommended to prepare the manuscript text]

Look at the sheer proliferation of M$hit formats on that list. The 1st preference is always doc. Wherever PDF is accepted, M$hit is recommended to make that PDF.

Even if you want to change *they* will not let you.
Ugh.

Am I in the wrong field or what? Nevermind content, even submission guidelines are so proprietary, backwards-thinking and insular.

11/16/2011 07:35 #55521

Undo any last action in Linux?
Category: linux
Sometimes, I accidentally move files into folders. However, I am uncertain what files I moved (because I wasn't paying attention when my stylus accidentally dragged and dropped that file into some nearby folder). So I know that something has changed in the directory but I am not sure about what has changed. In windows, I could easily right click and undo whatever the last action was - rename/delete/move. Where is this undo functionality in Linux??

If there isn't a way, is there at least a log that logs all these events so I could check it and see what was changed?

Am I missing some obvious way to do this? Ctrl-Z does not cut it.
tinypliny - 11/18/11 21:59

data exceed the size of the drive



this must be my dumb and dumber day... I have no idea what you are saying!!? If you start copying 10 gigs of data into a drive of say 4 gigs, it gives you a warning that the drive space is inadequate. Copying stops with a small buffer of space remaining on the destination drive. If you undo all this the copies files are just deleted.
paul - 11/18/11 21:38
I still dont' see what happens when the data exceeds the size of the drive. I get it with moves but not copies. I guess it probably works most of the time if directories never meet that condition.
tinypliny - 11/18/11 21:26
Its exactly like the undo option in chrome or any word processor for text. All recent actions in a session are potentially un-doable.

I think you are thinking about linux when you ask this because linux assumes you are smart enough and know what you are doing and there are no step-backs. But when your stylus is either a) not very precisely controlled (because your stylus company just doesn't care about linux enough), or b) maybe its too sensitive and you sneeze moving some folder inadvertently because you are in the nautilus gui, you have no way of knowing what changed...

It doesn't happen often but it does sometimes and is agonizing without an undo option. I posted in Ubuntu forums where people actually bother to answer and someone told me that Dolphin (KDE's file browser gui) has the undo option.
tinypliny - 11/18/11 21:20
% then a program started to fill your drive

I am not sure I understand this bit. If you copy a folder with gigs of data, you can still undo it. Windows will just delete the copy you made. Every time you do a rename, delete, copy or move anywhere, the context menu item for the corresponding undo rename, undo delete, undo copy or undo move becomes active and you can immediately go back to the original state. In any one session, if you have several such actions, ALL of them can be undone one by one stepping backwards.
paul - 11/18/11 21:14
I dont even understand how undo could work under all situations. Say you copied a folder with gigs of data, then a program started to fill your drive, then you undo? What happens?
tinypliny - 11/16/11 20:34
Nautilus is an awful file browser. Compared to the one in windows, it really feels like it came from the 1980s.

paul - 11/16/11 20:10
I never do anything with Nautilus or the GUI so I have no idea. I don't think there is a way.