How to properly reload KDE settings after replacing the kdeglobals file? - dbus

I'm making a tool that backs up KDE settings. I want to be able to replace the kdeglobals file (normally stored in ~/.config) and reload the settings without restarting the session. Currently, to do this safely, the plasma shell is terminated, then the file is replaced, and finally, a new plasma shell process is started.
I've heard that there is a more proper way to do this using DBus; however, I cannot find the right signal. The answers I've found are outdated and seem to be based on KDE 4 (specifically, they seem point to org.kde.KGlobalSettings /KGlobalSettings org.kde.KGlobalSettings notifyChange, but using qdbus prints "Cannot find 'org.kde.KGlobalSettings' in object /KGlobalSettings at org.kde.plasmashell"). Is there a proper way to do this in KDE 5, either using DBus or some other mechanism? If not, how does the KCM module achieve this? Can it be done using the shell?

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Is it possible to use a GUI based text editor (e.g. Eclipse) from the terminal?

I'd like to use terminal for all of my normal git and compiling and running processes (my school has a server that is linked to my repo on bitbucket), but I really don't like terminal-based text editing software such as Emacs and Vim. Is it possible to open and edit files from the terminal using a GUI based text editor? The reason I'm asking is because the terminal is the only way I can access the server files. Thanks in advance!
Aw, but vim is the best! :) Well, you can use nano, which is friendlier. Or, if you insist: if you are using SSH to connect to the server (and the server has an X server running !) then you can look into the ssh -X option to view X windows on your remote machine.
Oh and you could look into scp command as well (behaves almost just like regular cp, but the destination is on another host). That way you could edit on your machine, then copy it via SSH (although you'd want to be careful when copying files directly to the server filesystem)
Edit: Also, if you really don't like using the terminal (why though? (-: ), some file managers allow you to get the same functionality of the previous commands purely via GUI (for example).
You've left out some important information that someone would need to know to answer your questions. The other posters have made some assumptions.
You've mentioned this "terminal", but it's not clear exactly what that is, or how you're getting to it. What kind of computer do you have in front of you? What shell is running in that terminal? Is the shell running on your local computer, or have you remotely connected to a server and running that shell on the remote computer?
Based on what you said, I have a feeling you're making a remote connection to a server, perhaps using ssh. You likely have either a Windows or Mac PC in front of you. In those circumstances, running a GUI editor like Eclipse is possible, but likely not practical. You would have to have Eclipse installed on that remote computer, and you would be displaying the Eclipse window on your local computer using the X11 protocol. That takes a lot of bandwidth.
If my assumptions are correct, my recommendations depend on how long you expect you're going to want to stay familiar with this environment. If you intend to do this sort of work forever, then you should learn vi and Emacs to the best of your ability. As someone who's been using Emacs likely longer than you've been alive, I'd recommend you learn it, but vi is also a critical skill.
UNIXY systems provide open or gopen, depending on your OS, that should get the job done. From the man page:
By default, gopen will open filename with the application currently assigned to the file's extension. But by specifing the -a flag on the command line you can tell gopen to open the file with another application.
This means that you can use it to open files in your preferred editor
with a line like
gopen -a Eclipse file

Apple automator save as ### filename + extension selection

I'm trying to get some automator script going but I have no clue how to achieve it. It's like this:
in Processing I exported a batch of 1850 SVG's. These SVG's now have to be opened in an application called Cenon. This application can save SVG's as .hpgl files.
It's no problem to open a file in a specific application like Cenon when it's added to a folder. That works fine.
But how do I save this file in a specific extension like .hpgl and create a variable name? Because Cenon always opens a file with the name 'UNTITLED'.
So I need to do:
automatically open file one by one in Cenon
save file as .hpgl file
save file with variable name like (0001, 0002, 0003, 0004, 0005, etc.)
I hope someone can help me!!
Thanks in advance,
Fons.
First of all, let me make a distinction between two related technologies:
AppleEvents which are messages that can be used for different applications to communicate with each other, asking each other to do tasks.
AppleScript which is one kind of scripting language that can send and receive AppleEvents to and from Mac applications.
You can't use AppleEvents with Cenon but you still may be able to use AppleScript with Cenon. I know that you can't use AppleEvents with Cenon because I downloaded Cenon version 4.0.1 from the web and I tried to open up it's AppleEvent dictionary with the "AppleScript Editor.app" application that comes with OS X.
So, AppleEvents are out. This means the "tell" command in AppleScript can't tell the Cenon.app to do anything with AppleEvents, but you may still be able to use AppleScript.
AppleScript can be used by simulating user menu-selections and key strokes instead of using AppleEvents. Using AppleEvents would be better, but sometimes, using AppleScript, you have to go through the user interface.
An alternative to resorting to using AppleScript to simulate the user-interface (UI) would be to use a shell-command. It just seems to me that this would be a better solution, but you would have to find a Unix shell command that was compiled for Mac that would convert from .svg to .hpgl
If you really want to use AppleScript and Cenon.app, here is a link to study about using AppleScript going through the UI of an app:
http://www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/uiscripting/
AppleScript was originally designed to be a scripting language to take some of the functionality with application A, and then take some of the functionality of application B, etc, and glue it together with a little logic from AppleScript and empower the user to more easily automate their tasks.
AppleScript was designed to be an alternate user-interface, going through AppleEvents, but AppleEvents are not as widely supported as they could be by applications, so this kludgy solution of having AppleScript go through the GUI is commonly done.
Again, I think that a shell script would be a better solution for this problem and you could call is "solution.command" or you could embed the shell script into an Automator Workflow saved as an Application or embed the shell script within an AppleScript saved as an application. Either one work work.

WinAPI C - RunAsUser from REDMON_USER and REDMON_SESSIONID

I installed a PostScript printer driver and have setup REDMON (redmonnt.dll) for redirecting postscript output to my program. In my rather simple c program I capture the data from STDIN and I am able to successfully save it into a .ps file. The file looks OK.
However, I want to start gsview.exe for viewing the file. If I call ShellExecute it fails in Windows 7 because of permission issues. It seems that my program is called under a different user account (LOCAL SERVICE). So I am looking for a way to run gsview.exe under a specific username (the user who initiated the print job) which is available to the program in a variable called REDMON_USER along with the SESSIONID as well.
Q: What are the minimum WinAPI calls required to start a program given a username and a sessionid?
Any code examples in C/C++, .NET would be very helpful.
EDIT: What I am trying accomplish is something very similar to redrunee (from redmonee). I don't want to use redrunee because it opens about a console window for a brief moment.
Note:
1) The program is called by the printer service as [LOCAL SERVICE] account.
2) The first parameter Username (REDMON_USER), in effect, points to the user currently looking at the screen
Look at CreateProcessAsUser.
Also look at CreateProcessWithLogonW and CreateProcess.
They are linked from the CreateProcessAsUser
EDIT In reply to comments by OP.
Follow advice from this thread.
I am copying this here verbatim, in case the original link stops working:
The same code works for us on Vista as
on XP, etc. The service is running as
the Local System.
use WTSGetActiveConsoleSessionId to get the ID of the current active
Windows session at the console (i.e.
the machine keyboard and display, as
opposed to WTS sessions).
use WTSQueryUserToken to get the token for that session.
use DuplicateTokenEx(hToken,MAXIMUM_ALLOWED,NULL,SecurityIdentification,TokenPrimary,
&hTokenDup) to duplicate that token.
use CreateEnvironmentBlock to create an environment that you will be
passing to the process.
use CreateProcessAsUser with the duplicated token and the created
environment. Actually, we use
CreateProcessAsUserW, since the A
version had some sort of bug on some
older systems.
Don't forget to CloseHandle on the various tokens, etc, and to
DestroyEnvironmentBlock the
environment.
Thank you efratian.
PS. Oh joy of Windows programming, did not do it for quite a while. Now I remember why. The only thing that is close or even worse documented is OpenSSH programming.
The documentation describes the "Run as User" feature, which seems to be exactly what you want:
Run as User is intended for launching a GUI program such as GSview locally via RedRun.

Getting proxy information on Linux programmatically

I am currently using libproxy to get the proxy information (if any) on RedHat and Debian Linux. It doesn't work all that well, but it's the only way I know I can use to get the proxy information from my code.
I need to stop using the lib since in most cases it doesn't recognize the proxy.
Is there any way to acquire the proxy information? What i mean is, is there a file (or group of files) i can read, or an env variable or an API or system call that i can use to get the information?
Gnome based code is OK, KDE might help as well but i am looking for something more generic.
The code is C.
Now, before anyone asks, I don't want to use libproxy anymore. Period. I don't want to start investigating why it doesn't work. I don't really want to know whether there is a new version of that lib. I know it might work, I just don't want to use it. i can't use it (just because). So please don't point me that way.
Code is appreciated.
thanks.
In linux, the "global proxy setting" is typically just environment variables that are usually set in /etc/profile. You can examine those variables to see what proxy is set.
The variables are:
http_proxy - the proxy for HTTP connections
ftp_proxy - the proxy for FTP connections
Using the Network Proxy Preferences tool under Gnome saves information in the GConf database. The path to the keys are /system/http_proxy and /system/proxy. You can read about the detail in those trees at this page.
You can access the GConf database using the library API. Note that GConf is based on GObject. To examine the contents of this tree using the command line, try the following:
gconftool-2 -R /system/http_proxy
This will provide a "name = value" listing of the tree, which may be usable in your application. Note that this requires a system() call, so it's not recommended for a deployed application, but it might help you get started.
GNOME has its own place to store the Proxy settings, and I am sure KDE or any other DE has its own place too. May be you can look for any mention of where Proxy settings should be store in the Linux Standard Base. That could hint you a standard of doing it irrespective of Distro or DE.
DE -> Desktop Environment
char* proxy = getenv("all_proxy");
This statement puts the value of the environment variable called all_proxy, which is used by the system as a global proxy, in your C variable.
To print it in bash, try env | grep 'all_proxy' | cut -d= -f 2.

How to allow a user to edit data in a separate app from the terminal?

I am writing a terminal-based application, but I want the user to be able to edit certain text data in a separate editor. For example, if the user chooses to edit the list of current usernames, the list should open as a text file in the user's favorite editor (vim, gedit, etc.). This will probably be an environment variable such as $MYAPPEDITOR. This is similar to the way commit messages work in svn.
Is the best way to do this to create a temporary file in /tmp, and read it in when the editor process is terminated? Or is there a better way to approach this problem?
There's already a $EDITOR variable, which is extremely standard and I have seen it working on a wide variety of unixes. Also, vi is always an option on any flavor of unix.
Debian has a sensible-editor command that invokes $EDITOR if it can, or falls back to some standard ones otherwise. Freedesktop.org has an xdg-open command that will detect which desktop environment is running and open the file with the associated application. As far as I know, sensible-editor doesn't exist on other distributions, and of course xdg-open will fail in a text-only environment, but it couldn't hurt to try as many options as possible, if you think it's important that a desktop user can see their happy shiny gedit or kate instead of scary old vi or nano. ;)
The way crontab and sudoedit work is also by making a file in /tmp. git puts it under .git, and svn actually puts it in the current directory (not /tmp).
The way svn and mercurial do it is by making a file in /tmp.
BTW, you don't need a MYAPPEDITOR, on nix there's EDITOR already present.
Since you mention svn in your post, why not just follow the same methodology? svn opens a file with a particular name with whatever $EDITOR (or $SVN_EDITOR) contains - this might actually require some work on your part; determining the parameters to each supported editor. In either case, you have the name of the file that was saved (or the error code of the application if something failed) and you can just use that.

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