As we all know we can have /dev/video0 as a directory for receiving the output of a webcam.
Is it possible to create a fake /dev/something directory through a C program and continuously output there the contents of some created png files in order to create a fake webcam for example?
I will then read the live stream for an other application.
Thanks.
If all you need is a place in the filesystem where some application can read some specific data, use mkfifo to create it.
Then you can write a producer that writes whatever you need at whatever bitrate to it and have a consumer reading from it. If you output what the consumer expects, you might be able to get something that resembles a "live stream" of faked data.
Related
I've created a virtual filesystem that presents its outputs as read-only named pipes (i.e., S_IFIFO).
As far as getattr is concerned, my host is showing that the permission mode is set correctly. However, when I attempt to open the pipe (e.g., cat my_fuse_mount/my_pipe), it apparently does so but no data flows.
I was expecting the open-read-release sequence to do the necessary to open and push data into a named pipe, but apparently not. When I run in debugging mode, FUSE's log doesn't seem to indicate that it's trying to do anything.
What FUSE operation/s is/are used to push data into a named pipe?
FUSE can create special files such as named pipes, but its read and write operations are only operational for normal files. If you want to implement a pipe, you would need something like CUSE.
Here I have a Tmote Sky node. And I have printf the RSSI on the terminal. Now I want to store these RSSI data to my computer. I have tried cfs which is used to operate the external flash of a node. So how can I save the data to my computer with contiki.
/platform/sky/Makefile.common provides a target serialdump, which will also print the output to a file named serialdump-<current time>. Therefore you want to tun make serialdump TARGET=sky.
Or do you want to get the data from the external flash? In that case you need to add a function that dumps the file contents to the serial (e.g. when pushing the button or sending a special command via serial). You can then save that output to a file.
I am designing a logger plugin for my tool.I have a busybox syslog on a target board, and i want to get syslog data from it so i can forward to my host(not via remote port forwarding of syslog) via my own communication framework.Initially i had made use of syslog's ability to forward messages it receives to a named pipe but this only works via a patch addition which is not feasible in my case.So now my idea is to write a configuration file in syslog to forward all log messages it receives to a file and track the file to get my data.I can use tail function to monitor my file changes but my busybox tail does not support "--follow" option since syslog performs logrotate which causes "tail -f" to fail.And also i am not sure if this is a good method to do it.So what i wanted to ask is there another way in which i can get modified data from a file.I can use inotify, but that can only be used to track file changes.So is there a way to do this?
You could try the "diff" utility (or git-diff, which has more facilities).
You may write a script/program which can receive an inotify event. And the script reopens the file and starts to read till EOF, from the previously saved last read file position.
I have three processes designed to run constantly in both Linux and Mac OS X environments. One process (the Downloader) downloads and stores a local copy of a large XML file every 30 seconds. Two other processes (the Workers) use the stored XML file for input. Each Worker starts and runs at random times. Since the XML file is big, it takes a long time to download. The Workers also take a long time to read and parse it.
What is the safest way to setup the processes so the Downloader doesn't clobber the stored file while the Workers are trying to read it?
For Linux and Mac OS X machines that use inode based file systems, use temporary files to store the data while its being downloaded (and is an incomplete state). Once the download is complete, move the temporary file into its final location with an atomic action.
For a little more detail, there are two main things to watch out for when one process (e.g. Downloader) writes a file that's actively read by other processes (e.g. Workers):
Make sure the Workers don't try to read the file before the Downloader has finished writing it.
Make sure the Downloader doesn't alter the file while the Workers are reading it.
Using temporary files accommodates both of these points.
For a more specific example, when the Downloader is actively pulling the XML file, have it write to a temporary location (e.g. 'data-storage.tmp') on the same device/disk* where the final file will be stored. Once the file is completely downloaded and written, have the Downloader move it to its final location (e.g. 'data-storage.xml') via an atomic (aka linearizable) rename command like bash's mv.
* Note that the reason the temporary file needs to be on the same device as the final file location is to ensure the inode number stays the same and the rename can be done atomically.
This methodology ensures that while the file is being downloaded/written the Workers won't see it since it's in the .tmp location. Because of the way renaming works with inodes, it also make sure that any Worker that opened the file continues to see the old content even if a new version of the data-storage file is put in place.
Downloader will point 'data-storage.xml' to a new inode number when it does the rename, but the Worker will continue to access 'data-storage.xml' from the previous inode number thereby continuing to work with the file in that state. At the same time, any Worker that opens a new copy 'data-storage.xml' after Downloader has done the rename will see contents from the new inode number since it's now what is referenced directly in the file system. So, two Workers can be reading from the same filename (data-storage.xml) but each will see a different (and complete) version of the contents of the file based on which inode the filename was pointed to when the file was first opened.
To see this in action, I created a simple set of example scripts that demonstrate this functionality on github. They can also be used to test/verify that using a temporary file solution works in your environment.
An important note is that it's the file system on the particular device that matters. If you are using a Linux or Mac machine but working with a FAT file system (for example, a usb thumb drive), this method won't work.
After doing tons of research and nor being able to find a solution to my problem i decided to post here on stackoverflow.
Well my problem is kind of unusual so I guess that's why I wasn't able to find any answer:
I have a program that is recording stuff to a file. Then I have another one that is responsible for transferring that file. Finally I have a third one that gets the file and processes it.
My problem is:
The file transfer program needs to send the file while it's still being recorded. The problem is that when the file transfer program reaches end of file on the file doesn't mean that the file actually is complete as it is still being recorded.
It would be nice to have something to check if the recorder has that file still open or if it already closed it to be able to judge if the end of file actually is a real end of file or if there simply aren't further data to be read yet.
Hope you can help me out with this one. Maybe you have another idea on how to solve this problem.
Thank you in advance.
GeKod
Simply put - you can't without using filesystem notification mechanisms, windows, linux and osx all have flavors of this. I forget how Windows does it off the top of my head, but linux has 'inotify' and osx has 'knotify'.
The easy way to handle this is, record to a tmp file, when the recording is done then move the file into the 'ready-to-transfer-the-file' directory, if you do this so that the files are on the same filesystem when you do the move it will be atomic and instant ensuring that any time your transfer utility 'sees' a new file, it'll be wholly formed and ready to go.
Or, just have your tmp files have no extension, then when it's done rename the file to an extension that the transfer agent is polling for.
Have you considered using stream interface between the recorder program and the one that grabs the recorded data/file? If you have access to a stream interface (say an OS/stack service) which also provides a reliable end of stream signal/primitive you could consider that to replace the file interface.
There is no functions/libraries available in C to do this. But a simple alternative is to rename the file once an activity is over. For example, recorder can open the file with name - file.record and once done with recording, it can rename the file.record to file.transfer and the transfer program should look for file.transfer to transfer and once the transfer is done, it can rename the file to file.read and the reader can read that and finally rename it to file.done!
you can check if file is open or not as following
FILE_NAME="filename"
FILE_OPEN=`lsof | grep $FILE_NAME`
// if [ -z $FILE_NAME ] ;then
// "File NOT open"
// else
// "File Open"
refer http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl8_lsof.htm
I think an advisory lock will help. Since if one using the file which another program is working on it, the one will get blocked or get an error. but if you access it in force,the action is Okey, but the result is unpredictable, In order to maintain the consistency, all of the processes who want to access the file should obey the advisory lock rule. I think that will work.
When the file is closed then the lock is freed too.Other processes can try to hold the file.