This repository contains some tools that I have written over the years. I hope that you find them useful too!
I have invested some extra time into making the tools robust and giving them reasonable help texts. Please send feedback to rdiezmail-tools at yahoo.de
The tools are:
background.sh
Runs the given command with a low CPU and disk priority, keeps a log file, and displays a visual notification or sends an e-mail when finished.
I could not live without this script anymore.
FilterTerminalOutputForLogFile.pl
Optimise away the carriage return trick often used to update a progress indicator in place on the current console text line.
RDChecksum
Creates, updates or verifies a list of file checksums (hashes).
This tool can save a lot of time, because 1) it can update the checksums only for those files that have changed in the meantime (according to their 'last modified' timestamps), and 2) it can resume an interrupted checksum verification, instead of having to start from the first file again.
StartDetached.sh
Starts a program detached from the console, with its stdout and stderr redirected to syslog.
Useful when starting graphical applications that should not print to your shell session random warnings at inconvenient times, and which should stay running after closing the console window (do not automatically get SIGHUP).
xsudo.sh
A simple wrapper for pkexec as a substitute for gksudo.
CountdownTimer.pl
A countdown timer, like a kitchen timer for your perfect cup of tea.
DesktopNotification.sh
A little script to display a simple desktop notification. I use it for example from KTimer to alert me when a timer has expired.
open-file-explorer.sh
Opens a file explorer on the given file or directory.
File Read Test
The File Read Test tools read disk files or directories and stop on the first read error. There are two alternatives to choose from: a Java application (with a point-and-click user interface) and a perl script (to use from the command-line).
This tool has its own website at http://filereadtest.sourceforge.net
Quick Disk Test
Quick Disk Test fills a disk with test data and verifies that it can be read back without errors.
This tool is only available as a Java application. Check out its website at http://filereadtest.sourceforge.net
copy-with-rsync.sh and move-with-rsync.sh
If you often copy around large amounts of data, want to resume interrupted transfers, and can never remember rsync's flags, copy-with-rsync.sh should help.
If you try to move files and subdirectores with 'mv' overwriting any existing ones, you may come across the infamous "directory not empty" error message. Script move-with-rsync.sh uses rsync to work-around this issue.
Disk Images With Progress
This is not actually script, but an article about displaying a progress indication while creating or restoring disk images, or while wiping a disk.
burn-cd.sh
You would normally use an application like Brasero to burn CD-ROMs (or DVD-ROMs, etc). But sometimes you need to automate the process, so that it is faster or more reliable.
I found CD burning hard to automate. I hope that this script helps.
mount-windows-shares-sudo.sh
Script template to help mount Windows/Samba/SMB network file shares with the traditional Linux sudo mount method.
The script checks whether the filesystem is already mounted, and it can also automatically open a file explorer on the just-mounted filesystem for convenience. There is an option to generate a configuration line for sudoers to prevent the sudo password prompt every time.
There is also a variant for GVfs/FUSE, so that you do not need root privileges, but I am not using it because GVfs is problematic, see the comments in the script for more information.
MountMyRamdiskIfNecessary.sh
This script creates and mounts a RAM disk (tmpfs) at a fixed location, if not already mounted.
A RAM disk can dramatically speed-up certain operations, such as building software with many small files.
MountScripts
Other script templates to mount SSHFS, EncFs, WebDAV, etc., and sometimes 2 filesystems stacked (like SSHFS + EncFS).
takeownership.sh
Little convenience script to take ownership of a given file or directory (recursively).
ResetWindowsFilePermissions.bat
Resets file permissions under a given directory on a Microsoft Windows system.
NoPassword scripts
These scripts help you configure sudo and polkit to stop password prompting for the commands or privileged actions of your choice.
Sandboxing Skype
These scripts help you sandox Skype under Linux.
Office Software Automation
PromptAndProcess.vbs (for Windows)
Sometimes you need to write a small script that lets a user select a file and do some operation on it, like convert it to another format. This script provides a full-blown example for a simple file copy operation.
PromptForFile.vbs (for Windows/Cygwin)
Prompts the user for a file with Windows' standard "open file" dialog, and prints the selected filename to stdout. Useful for Cygwin bash scripts.
ConvertWordToPDFWithBackground.vbs (for Windows)
Converts a Microsoft Word document to a PDF file, and then generates a second PDF file with extra content in the background (typically a letterhead or watermark) on all pages.
add-letterhead.sh (for Linux)
Adds extra content in the background (typically a letterhead or watermark) to all pages of a PDF document.
CopyToOldVersionsArchive.vbs (for Windows)
Creates an "Archived" subdirectory where the given file resides and copies the file there. The current date and time are appended to the archived filename.
copy-to-old-versions-archive.sh (for Linux)
Creates an "Archived" subdirectory where the given file resides and copies the file there. The current date and time are appended to the archived filename.
Foldable DIN A4 Name Tag for Seminars
With dotted lines that indicate where to fold the sheet to get a paper triangle with your name on it.
Electrical Calculations Spreadsheet
A simple spreadsheet for Ohm's law and electrical power calculations.
Car Maintenance Checklist
A simple checklist to check your car: tyre pressure, engine oil level, and so on.
Phonetic Alphabet
The phonetic alphabet in English and German.
Helpful if you have to spell complicated words or proper nouns over the phone
Test Bar Codes for the Interleaved 2 of 5 Symbology
Some scanners have difficulty reading bar codes with the Interleaved 2 of 5 symbology. I have prepared a LibreOffice Writer document with some bar codes to test the scanner's number length and check digit configuration.
VNC/RemoteControlPrompt.sh
Helps the user connect to a listening VNC viewer.
There is also another script called LinuxDesktopOverSshWithXephyr.sh there.
And yet another script to start a remote desktop with a TigerVNC / TightVNC Xvnc virtual desktop.
VirtualMachineManager/start-and-connect-to-vm.sh
Starts the given Linux libvirt virtual machine, if not already running, and opens a graphical console to it with virt-manager.
VirtualMachineManager/set-vm-screen-resolution.sh
Resizes the virtual graphics card resolution.
VirtualMachineManager/BackupVm.sh
Backs up a virtual machine.
OpenVPN
A guide and some scripts to configure OpenVPN in bridging/TAP mode on Ubuntu 18.04.
timecmd.bat
Prints the time it takes to run a Microsoft Windows command.
repeat.bat
Cheap clone of watch for Microsoft Windows.
print-arguments-wrapper.sh
When writing complex shell scripts, sometimes you wonder if a particular process is getting the right arguments and the right environment variables. Just prefix a command with the name of this script, and it will dump all arguments and environment variables to the console before starting the child process.
RunAndReport.sh and GenerateHtmlReport.pl
Generates a report table with all commands executed and their succedded/failed status. You can then drill down to the command log files.
WaitForSignals.sh
Waits for Unix signals to arrive. This script is mainly useful during development or troubleshooting of Linux processes.
clipboard.sh
Helps you pipe the output of a shell console command to the X clipboard.
pipe-to-emacs-server.sh
Helps you pipe the output of a shell console command to a new emacs window.
run-in-new-console.sh
Runs the given shell command in a new console window.
RotateDir.pl
If you keep running a process that generates a big directory tree every time (like building a compiler toolchain overnight), and you only want to keep the most recent file trees, this directory rotation tool will automatically prune the older ones for you.
AnnotateWithTimestamps.pl
Prints a text line for each byte read, with timestamp, time delta, byte value and ASCII character name.
Useful when troubleshooting data timing issues.
PadFile.sh
This tool copies a file and keeps adding the given padding byte at the end until the specified file size has been reached.
GenerateRangeMappingTable.pl
Generates a mapping table (a look-up table) between an integer range and another numeric range (integer or floating point). The mapping can be linear or exponential.
ConvertBitmapToSourceCode.pl
Converts a bitmap in Portable Pixmap format (PPM) format, monochrome or RGB565, into a C++ array. RGB565 is a very popular 16-bit color depth format among small hardware devices.
decode-jtag-idcode.pl
Breaks a JTAG IDCODE up into fields as specified in IEEE standard 1149.1. Example output:
% perl decode-jtag-idcode.pl 0x4BA00477 Decoding of JTAG IDCODE 0x4BA00477 (1268778103, 0b01001011101000000000010001110111): Version: 0b0100 (0x4, 4) Part number: 0b1011101000000000 (0xBA00, 47616) Manufacturer: 0b01000111011 (0x23B, 571) # Name: ARM Ltd. Leading bit: 1 # Always set to 1 according to the IEEE standard 1149.1FindUsbSerialPort.sh
Finds the device file associated to a USB virtual serial port. You can search for any combination of USB Vendor ID, Product ID, Serial Number, etc.
RunBundledScriptAfterDelay.sh
Changes to the directory where this script resides, resolving any symbolic links used to start it, and runs another script after the given delay. Useful to start delayed tasks from KDE's braindead "autostart" feature. Otherwise, you'll have to write a little script with the right full path and an eventual sleep statement every time.
email-news-feeds.sh
Helper script to automatically run tool 'rss2email' after every login, in order to get your news conveniently delivered to your mailbox.
script-speed-test.sh
Simple script template to measure how long it takes to run some test script code a given number of iterations.
StressTest/synthetic-task.sh
Helps you create simple, dummy computing tasks that run in a given number of child processes for a given number of iterations. Useful for load testing.
StressTest/consume-memory.pl
StressTrash.sh
Stresses the system trash (recycle bin).
build-xfce.sh
Downloads and builds Xfce from source.
unpack.sh
Conveniently and safely unpacks an archive (zip, tarball, ISO image, etc) into a subdirectory.
DownloadTarball.sh
Reliably downloads a tarball by checking its integrity before committing the downloaded file to the destination directory.
DownloadAndBuildAutotools.sh
Downloads, builds and installs any desired versions of the GNU autotools (autoconf + automake + libtool).
SendRawEthernetFrame.py
Sends a raw Ethernet frame. Useful for testing purposes.
BackupFiles
Script templates to help backup files and test the backups. There are also scripts for updating file mirrors for online backup purposes.
BackupWikiPages.sh
Downloads a set of Wiki pages in several formats from a MediaWiki server.
RecompressSelectively.sh
Template script to selectively recompress archive files (like zip files) across subdirectories.
CheckIfAnyFilesModifiedRecently.sh
Helps implement an early warning if a directory has not been updated recently as it should.
watchdog.sh
This script runs a user command if the given file has not been modified in the last x seconds.
timestamp.sh
Determine the highest modification time of all given files or directories. This helps write makefiles that must check large directory structures.
view-pod-as-html.sh
Checks that the POD (Perl's Plain Old Documentation markup) syntax is OK, converts it to HTML and opens it with the standard Web browser.
ReplaceTemplatePlaceholderWithFileContents.sh and ReplaceTemplatePlaceholders.sh
These tools read a template text file and replace all occurrences of the given placeholder strings with the contents of another file or with the given command-line arguments.
CheckVersion.sh
Helps generate an error or warning message if a given version number is different/less than/etc. compared to a reference version number.
TidyUrl.sh
Downloads the given URL to a fixed filename under your home directory, and runs HTML tidy against it for lint purposes. It can also lint CSS with stylelint.
ImageTools
WebPictureGenerator.sh
Generates pictures for a web site from high-resolution photographs. Processing steps are cropping, scaling, watermarking, removing all EXIF information and adding copyright information as the only EXIF data.
TransformImage.sh
Crops and/or resizes a JPEG image with ImageMagick or jpegtran. The resulting image is optimised in order to save disk space.
Git Helper Scripts
clean-git-repo.sh
Reverts the working directory to a pristine state, like after doing the first "git clone" (which is rather destructive).
git-revert-file-permissions.sh
Git stores the 'execute' file permission in the repository, but permissions get sometimes lost when copying files around to/from Windows PCs or FAT/FAT32 disk partitions. This script restores all file permissions to their original values in the Git repository.
git-stash-only-staged-changes.sh and git-stash-only-unstaged-changes.sh
git-stash-only-staged-changes.sh stashes only the changes in the stage/index. It is useful if you are in the middle of a big commit, and you just realised that you want to make a small, unrelated commit before the big one.
git-stash-only-unstaged-changes.sh stashes only the changes in the working files that are not in the stage/index. Useful to test that your next commit compiles cleanly, or just to temporarily unclutter your workspace.
pull.sh
Use instead of "git pull" in order to prevent creating unnecessary merge commits without having to remember git commands or options.
zram Statistics
Displays some system memory statistics specifically aimed at zram swap partitions.
Later note: This script probably does not work on recent Linux kernel versions.
Fake Replacement for Debian Package apt-xapian-index
It is well known (as of may 2014) that update-apt-xapian-index consumes loads of memory and can easily render a computer with only 512 MiB of RAM unusable.
This fake APT package helps get rid of the whole apt-xapian-index package in Ubuntu or Debian systems without collateral dependency damage.
mlocate Conflicting Package
The locate background indexer can grind your Linux PC to a halt every now and then for several minutes at a time.
Install this package to prevent Debian packages locate and mlocate from ever being installed again.
Most tools are licensed under the AGPLv3, see file agpl-3.0.txt for details.
Use script GenerateLinks.sh to place symbolic links to the most-used scripts into a directory of your choice (which is normally your personal 'Tools' or 'Utils' directory in the PATH).