Inventions

Brief descriptions of many of my programs.  Most will operate on Linux and most UNIX platforms.

add, localtime, seconds, sub, tc, timeadd	add   Takes two wall clock times as arguments and prints to stdout the (wall clock time) sum of the times localtime   Takes an integer argument which represents seconds since epoch and prints to stdout date string (similar to the output of the date(1) command when invoked with no arguments seconds   Takes string arguments similar to the output of date(1) and prints to stdout the number of seconds since epoch represented by the arguments sub   ("subtract") Takes two wall clock arguments and prints to stdout their difference tc   ("time calculator") An interactive (wall clock) time calculator that works in a similar manner to bc(1) timeadd   Takes a time in a form similar to the output of date(1) and also an operator, a value, and a unit specification. If the operator is plus, the program adds <value> <units> to <time>. If the operator is a minus, the program subtracts <value> <units> from <time>. The resulting time (also in a format similar to date(1) output) is printed on stdout.
atif	("at interface") A front end to the at(1) command. An editing session is launched containing a template that allows the user to create at jobs that email reminders. The user fills in the template, which is a shell script containing a series of at commands. The user can then edit, cat, or run this script, execute a shell command, list current at jobs, delete at jobs, and view at jobs.
atsummary	Prints a summary of the commands in all pending at(1) jobs owned by the caller
autopurgetmp	An init.d/ script. When run in an IRIX machine's startup sequence, it deletes all files and directories in /tmp, depending on the value of certain flag as reported by IRIX's chkconfig(1) command. When run in an IRIX machine's shutdown sequence it sets or unsets a certain chkconfig flag, depending on conditions on the system.
bkp_atsummary	Captures the stdout of atsummary to create a snapshot of pending at(1) jobs
bkpinbox	("backup inbox") Creates a round-robin set of compressed copies of a user's mail spool in user (disk) space. The frequency at which these copies are made depends on cron tab entries, but is suggested to be once an hour.
catb	(named after "cat -b") Like cat(1), only each non-printable character is printed as a backslash followed by a three digit octal number (leading zeroes inserted as necessary) which represents the ascii number for that character.
cdir	("change directory") A program which prints change directory commands to stdout based on a selection from a menu displayed to the user. It's stdout is meant to be eval'd by another shell.
cfind	("command find") Determines a command's path given the command name. Searches a comprehensive list of directories in which executable files are typically found.
check	Lists information on *,v archive files in the current file tree
chkconfig	("check configuration") Mimics the functionality of IRIX's chkconfig(1) command. Written for systems that don't implement chkconfig.
chkdsk, chkdskunreg, mkchkdsktabentries, showchkdskdbm	This is a suite of programs that monitors non-raid scsi disks on an IRIX system and reports problems with any of them. The disks do not have to have mounted filesystems or active partitions.
chkptfile	("checkpoint file") Makes a copy of a file. All attributes (except for ctime :-) of the original file are preserved in the copy. Additionally, the name of the copy is the name of the original plus a suffix in the form of ".yyyymmdd.hhmmss" which represents the mtime of the original file.
chkstate	Given a string that identifies a command, and a pathname for a file that contains commands and command identifier strings, execute the command and return a boolean indicating the status of executing the command. Useful in cron jobs: e.g.:   chkstate --command checkmount --file commands-file && do_something_else
compress_whitespace_lines.c	Converts all sets of consecutive "null lines" to a single null line on stdout where null lines are lines with no characters or lines consisting entirely of whitespace
construct_var_defns	Prints environment variable definitions to stdout based on a given configuration file. Does this in several forms, including two that can be eval'd respectively by sh-type shells and csh-type shells. The configuration file contains a host list for each variable to be defined. Invocation arguments can specify which variable definitions to print and for which hosts or contexts.
contrast	Determines the contrast (a real number) of two rgb colors given their hexadecimal rgb representations.
cronalert	Program to log and send an alert if cron is not functioning properly for a user.
cronsnap	Checks to see, using md5 checksums, whether a backup of the current crontab exists. If it doesn't, one is made.
ctab	("crontab updater/lister") Aids users in creating and modifying crontabs. Locks a crontab using the same method employed by grab (which see). So only one process at a time can edit/modify the crontab. This is useful for sysadmins who need to update system crontabs. Also, snapshots are made in the $HOME directory of the caller. These are the previous (before user makes changes) and current (after user changes) forms of the user's crontab.
dateincr	("date increment") Changes the system clock forward or backward the given number of seconds.
delpwent	("delete passwd entry") Deletes an entry from /etc/passwd, identified by the arguments given
directories.lib.ksh	ksh/bash/posix sh shell function library containing shell functions dealing with directories
dmlocate, dmupdatedb, gendmlocdb, genudmldb.c	This is a suite of programs for IRIX and Unicos. It imitates the functionality of gnu's fast find utilities (locate and updatedb), but supplies additional functionality useful with SGI/Cray DMF filesystem.
dsed	("destructive sed") Operates on files named as arguments. Takes a sed(1) operation or set thereof and applies to the files. That is, the changes are written to the files, and not just sent to stdout as they are with sed.
duchk	("disk usage check") Examines a single directory or an entire directory tree (but will not cross filesystem boundaries) and lists files and their sizes in kbytes. Sorts in descending size order. Whitespace, shell metacharacters, and non-printable ascii characters in file names are handled correctly. Non-printable characters in file names are represented by octal escapes in output.
duration	Takes an even number of wall clock time arguments and computes: t2 - t1 + t4 - t3 + t6 - t5 + ... + tN - tN-1 Each odd numbered time is the start of a duration. Each even numbered time is a temporary stop time of the duration, followed by another start time. The last time, is of course the final end time of the duration. Given all of the start times and stop times, duration prints to stdout the amount of time of the complete duration.
dvinfo	("disk volume info") On IRIX machines, prints out disk partition info for all scsi disks.
emptydir	Shell utility to determine whether a directory is empty of non-hidden files
fakedd	Mimics the functionality of dd; wrote for a colleague for whom dd(1) wasn't functioning correctly at the target end of a network pipe
fileops.lib.ksh	ksh/bash/posix sh shell function library containing shell functions dealing with files and operations on them
finds	like find(1) except that it lists pathnames that have been modified within a given number of seconds (rather than days)
fmodchk	("file modification check") Generate alerts when file ages or file age differences satisfy user supplied criteria
fscapck	Logs and sends alerts when filesystem reach threshold capacities
gbiff	Makes an ssh connection in the background to bring up xbiff from a remote host
generate_bkp_file_list	Prints to stdout a list of files which are to be selected for backup
genmuttcfg	("generate mutt configuration") Generates on stdout mutt alias, save-hook, and fcc-hook information for the given file.
gpgedit	("gnu privacy guard edit") Decrypts a PGP encrypted file (user must supply passphrase) to a temporary file (with no group or world access). Invokes an editor on the temporary file. Commits or does not commit changes after prompting user.
grab, grabinit, steal	grab   A front end to an editor of the user's choice. Creates a lock file in a dedicated temporary directory. The first process to lock a file gets to edit it. All processes that try to edit a locked file get a full ls listing of the lock file (showing the owner, who is the user locking the file). This was useful years ago before I started using vim to edit files. grabinit   ("grab initialize") Executed in a machines startup sequence for system installs, and by a user's .login, .profile, or other shell rc file when a user logs in. Initializes the lock directory used by grab. steal   Goes through lock directory and facilitates easy "stealing", i.e., deleting lock files, of locked files. A user can only steal files if they have sufficient privilege. Used when the user knows that the locked file shouldn't be locked.
greplog	Prints to stdout portions of log files, based on given time ranges
hcmd	("host command") Executes its arguments as shell commands on a list of remote hosts. The set of hosts is determined by $0. Each value of $0 (different values made possible by symbolic links) corresponds to a different environment variable which contains a whitespace delimited list of hostnames.
html_sanitize	Filters input, replacing html metacharacters with the form of those characters beginning with an ampersand and ending with a semicolon. For use when the metacharacters should be interpreted literally, and not as metacharacters.
incycle	Given cycle (e.g., "every two weeks") and a live date in that cycle, determines whether today's date (or different given date) falls in that cycle. Useful for cron jobs.
jpeg-date-rename	Renames jpeg files to include a timestamp representing their mtimes
lmrep	("log message repeated") Replaces duplicate log message lines with the single line "last message repeated n times"
loadmail	Reads messages from an mbox style mail box into memory. Can be used as the basis for other functionality.
locate, updatedb	My own shell implementation of gnu's fast find utilities. Useful on systems which do not have gnu locate or on those on which I can't install it.
lock	Locks an xterm window (not an X11 session) with a password.
lock_with_stats	Calls an X11 screensaver and records to a log the time the display was locked and unlocked
log.lib.ksh	ksh/bash/posix sh shell function library containing shell functions dealing with logging infrastructure
Log::Monkey	perl module which logs to syslog, stderr, or a given file with optional timestamps and/or stack trace information
Log::Transcript	perl module to log data with log line headers to stderr and to a session transcript with option to email the session transcript
lsrm	Similar to "rm -i" but does an "ls -l" file listing before asking for delete confirmation
_lynx	Catenates stdin to a temporary file and invokes the lynx world wide web browser on the temporary file
mklockdir	Given a directory to create, the number of attempts to be made, and an interval to sleep between attempts, returns whether the attempt to create the directory was successful. Useful in getting locks.
mktmp.c	("make temporary file name") An implementation similar to that of linux's mktemp(1). In mine, you don't need to supply a template. You just get a six character string designed to make a filename unique.
muttuser	Converts lines containing an alias for an email addressee, the addressee's full name, the addressee's email address, and the addressee's email folder to .muttrc text containing mutt alias, fcc-hook and save-hook commands and prints them on stdout
mylocate, myupdatedb	Mimics gnu locate and updatedb; designed for non-privileged users
no_comment	Strips comments (null lines or lines beginning with optional whitespace and then the pound sign) from input
notify_by_email	Command line tool to send email using site specific mail servers
nrcp, nrmv	Atomic ("no race") copy and move
older	Returns 0 if a file is older than a given age in seconds.
only_printable	Like cat(1) except that non-printable ascii characters are not catenated to stdout.
pfwdmail	Accepts email on stdin (from procmail) and forwards selected SMTP headers to my cell phone if the sender is in a white list
pingurl	Sends and logs an alert if it can't load a given URL
portowner	Logs and sends an alert if the process bound to a particular port is not owned by a particular application
proc_cont_lines	("process continuation lines") Like cat(1) except that all "\\\n" pairs (i.e., a backslash followed by a newline) are deleted.
process_shutdown_state	An init.d/ script. When run at shutdown, turns off chkconfig flag indicating ungraceful shutdown. If shutdown is not graceful, then the "shutdown_complaint" flag, whose steady state is on, is not turned off. When this script is run at startup, if the shutdown_complaint flag is on, alerts sysadmins that the system may not have been shut down gracefully.
proclog	("process log") Rotates or zeroes out a (log) file. The chosen function is performed either unconditionally, or based on filesize. Rotation can be to any desired directory. The name of the rotated file may have an "o" prepended to the original name or may consist of the original name with a suffix indicating the date and time the file was rotated.
prtacct	("print account") Formats and prints to stdout a cbb (check book balancer) account file
psg	("process grep") Queries the process table for a given regular expression
puncom	("perl uncomment") Uncomments perl scripts to stdout.
purge_atsummary_backups	Purges at summary backups except for the most recent (see also atsummary)
randomxsetroot	Changes the X11 root window color to a randomly generated color
realpath	Resolves given paths to absolute paths. That is, paths which begin with '/' and contain no components which are symbolic links or '.' or '..'.
reminders	Sends email reminders depending on today's date
rockm3u	Selects random mp3 paths from a file tree and prints a random m3u play list
rs	Utility that performs rsync backups. Command line menu allows user to choose pull or push, remote host, and remote file tree.
shadrpt	Parses a shadow file to determine information on password expiration dates
showpathdef	Prints to stdout statements in shell startup files containing path definitions
shufflemp3s	From a directory full of files each containing the names of mp3 music files, prints to stdout a list of the contents of these files where the files have been chosen in random order
snap	Makes timestamped snapshots of files, preserving ownership (given sufficient privilege), mtimes, and permissions
tdist	Distributes files to a set of remote systems. Which set receives the files is dependent on $0, which, using symbolic links, is one of several shell variable names, each variable containing a different set of hosts
tlink	("test link") Uses ping(8) to "test a link", i.e. to notify admins when host is not reachable
to, from	Programs that "harvest" and print To: and From: email addresses from mbox style mail folders
treeinfo	Formats directory tree information. Output can be used to compare file and directory attributes of entire directory trees.
treesync	("tree synchronize") Takes two directories as arguments. Synchronizes the directory tree whose root node is the second argument with the tree whose root node is the first argument. That is, deletes anything in the second tree not found in the first tree, and creates in the second tree anything not there, but that is found in the first tree. (This was written years ago before I discovered the joys of rsync.)
uniqstr	("unique string") Prints a string designed to make a filename unique by its inclusion in the filename.
vitalinfo	Prints to stdout a snapshot of selected system statistics.
xfe	("xterm front end") Enhanced front end to xterm(1). Generates xterm windows with randomly selected colors. Color pairs can be selected from a file. Or two colors can be randomly chosen from showrgb(1) output. Or two random hex numbers representing rgb values can be generated. Or one of these methods can be randomly chosen. xfe is my perl rewrite of a shell script I wrote in, and continued to develop after 1995. The current version of xfe has been "in development" since 2001. It does what I need, so I haven't finished it. I'd like one day to release it. Here is its current usage statement: Copyright (C) 2001 David Alban (extasia@extasia.org) This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. usage: xfe [ options ] xfe Invocation options: -a,--attrfile [ Attrfile ] Use randomly selected attributes from an attributes file, Attrfile if given, to determine colors. The default attribute file is TBD. The default method of determining colors is to generate random hex numbers as color values. -A,--hex Use randomly generated six-digit hex numbers as values for colors. If a contrast threshold value is specified (elsewhere), use the first set of generated hex color values that satisfies the contrast threshold value. Otherwise use the first set of hex color values generated. This is the default method for determining colors. -b,--bg,--background Color Use Color as background color. The default method of determining colors is to generate random hex numbers as color values. -c,--cr,--cursor Color Use Color as cursor color. The default is to use the foreground color. -C,--contrast ContrastThreshold Use ContrastThreshold as the minimum contrast threshold value between foreground and background colors. The default minimum contrast threshold value is 0. The use of this option never causes an error. If it is not appropriate on the given command line, it is ignored. ContrastThreshold must be a non-negative integer or real number. -d,--debug [ DebugSpec ] Turn on debug mode. If DebugSpec is used, the characters contained in this string will govern which debug modes are selected. If DebugSpec is not used, the default mode of debug information is shown. The following characters in DebugSpec result in the following debug information being shown. 0 => show command lines as they are expanded, colors selected. This is the default debug mode. # => general color selection info $ => Show the values of relevant environment variables at startup * => expanded command lines . => *all* debug info @ => parsed command line info a => attrfile related info A => hex color generation info b => bg/fg/cr manual color generation C => contrast info e => window command info F => font info g => geometry info H => host command info i => inline invocation info m => meta color generation info n => don't launch xterm window r => rgbdb color generation info R => show candidate rgbdb pairs s => su command info S => scroll bar info t => title (including icon title) info x => xterm args info DebugSpec may not contain whitespace. -e,--execute Command [ ... ] Execute Command with optional arguments. This option must be last on the command line. The default command is /bin/bash. -f,--foreground,--fg Color Use Color as the cursor color. The default method of determining colors is to generate random hex numbers as color values. -F,--fn,--font Font Use Font as the font. The default font is TBD. -g,--gm,--geometry Geometry Use Geometry as the geometry. The default geometry is 80x40. -h,-?,--help List usage and exit with status indicating success. -H,--host HostSpec Connect to another host. HostSpec determines how this is done. HostSpec must be of one of the following forms: cmd@user@host cmd@@host user@host host The default command is ssh. The default user is the user invoking xfe. -i,--inline InlineSpec Expand InlineSpec into the command line where it appears. All such expansions are preprocessed before command line processing. InlineSpec may specify the location of any legal xfe command line or portion thereof, except that nested --inline invocations are not currently supported. If InlineSpec is the name of a defined environment variable then the value of the variable will be inlined. Else if InlineSpec is the name of an existing file, the first line in the file is inlined. -I,--icontitle Title Use Title as the icon title. The default icon title is the window title. -m,--meta Randomly select a method to determine colors. That is, let xfe randomly decide which of the method options to use to determine the colors. The default method of determining colors is to generate random hex numbers as color values. -n,--no-window Do not launch an xterm window. This is useful for debugging/informational purposes. -p,--plain,--failsafe Cause xfe to use the xterm defaults for (i.e., cause xfe not to specify): color selection scroll bar geometry font (TBD: others?) Title selection (and TBD: others) will still be done by xfe. The default is for xfe to make all of the selections mentioned above. -r,--rgbdb Use randomly selected colors from the rgb database as values for colors. If a contrast threshold value is specified (elsewhere), use the first set of selected values that satisfies the contrast threshold value. Otherwise use the first set of values selected. The default method of determining colors is to generate random hex numbers as color values. -s,--su [ - ] [ User ] Switch user to User. If the optional dash is supplied, it is passed on to su(1) as an argument. The target user is User if given, root otherwise. If the environment variable XFESUCMD is set, its value is passed to su(1)'s -c option. -S,--summary List usage summary and exit successfully. -t,--title Title Set window title to Title. Environment variable interpolation is performed and the following backslash escape sequences are supported: Replace With =========== ================================================== \$ $ \\ \ \~ The current working directory or '~' if in $HOME/ \a ("argv") the xfe command line (including $0) \A The final expanded command line (including $0) \b The background color \c The cursor color \C The actual contrast between the background and foreground colors (the null string if method = "attrfile") \e The basename of the window command followed by its arguments \E The window command followed by its arguments \f The foreground color \h The system hostname, up to the first '.' \H The system hostname \u The username of the current user \w The current working directory \W The basename of the current working directory -v,--verbose [ Increment ] Select verbose output level. Each instance of this option increases the verbose level from an initial level of 0 (no verbose output, the default). If Increment is used, the level is increased by that amount. Otherwise it is increased by 1. Increment must be a positive integer. Examples: "-v 4" and "-vv -v 2" would both result in a verbose level of 4. -V,--version Print version information and exit with status indicating success. -x,--xterm-args arg [ arg ... ] ;,--end Pass arguments verbatim to xterm(1). The -x form of this option is bounded by a semi-colon. The --xterm-args form is bounded by --end. If this option is last on the command line, it is not necessary for the args to be bounded. xfe does not check the option arguments to this option. The user should be familiar with xterm(1) options and should exercise care in choosing them. Note that if -e is used as an option argument to this option, then xfe's -e (--execute) option should not also be used. Options in the set: { --attrfile, --background, --cursor, --foreground, --hex, --rgbdb, --meta } are color selection options because they determine the method of selecting colors. They are incompatible with each other except for: { --background, --cursor, --foreground } which may be used together. The following options are "command" options and may be used only one per command line: { --execute, --host, --su }. The --plain option may not be used with any of the color selection options, or any of these options: { --font, --geometry }. Return codes: TBD
yestlog	("yesterday's log") Prints log entries from yesterday.
ymdhms	(name derived from a date(1) format) Prints the current date and time in the format: %Y<D3>%m<D3>%d<D1>%H<D2>%M<D2>%S where: %Y is the four digit year %m is the two digit month %d is the two digit day %H is the two digit hour %M is the two digit minute %S is the two digit second and <D...> are the delimiters, if any, given on the command line: <D1> is $1 <D2> is $2 <D3> is $3
zclean	Disk space management tool. Compresses or deletes or truncates files in given directories.