In preparation for this, you will need to install yaourt and enable it with sudo access. Either that or replace all the references to yaourt below with pacman.

Drop this into your ~/.bashrc (or zshrc):

function arch() {
        if [ -z "$1" ]; then
                echo "arch  " >&2
                return -1
        fi

        case $1 in
                upgrade)
                        # Synchronize, upgrade
                        shift
                        sudo yaourt -Syu $@
                        ;;
                install)
                        # Install stuff
                        shift
                        sudo yaourt -S $@
                        ;;
                localinstall)
                        # Install file
                        shift
                        sudo yaourt -U $@
                        ;;
                remove)
                        # Remove
                        shift
                        sudo yaourt -R $@
                        ;;
                fullremove)
                        # Remove file
                        shift
                        sudo yaourt -Rns $@
                        ;;
                info)
                        # Display information
                        shift
                        yaourt -Si $@
                        ;;
                search)
                        # Search
                        shift
                        yaourt -Ss $@
                        ;;
        esac
}

Now you can do things like:

$ arch install git
$ arch remove git
$ arch info git
$ arch search git

Hope its handy!

The solution was to use PowerShell, which is an extremely effective scripting tool for Windows, especially if you come from a UNIX shell background.

There is actually quite a lot of documentation available for it and rather than go into detail I will simply show you the script:

#
# RenameDirectoryFiles.ps1
#
 
param( [string[]]$paths )
Set-PSDebug -Strict
 
foreach ( $path in $paths ) {
    if ( !(Test-Path $path -PathType Container) ) {
        Write-Error "'$path' doesn't exist or isn't a directory"
        exit 1
    }
 
    $i = 0
    Get-ChildItem $path | sort FullName | foreach {
        $tmp = "{0:000}" -f $i
        $ext = $_.Extension
        $newname = "$path - $tmp$ext"
        Rename-Item $_.fullname $newname
        $newname
        $i = $i + 1
    }
}

So the usage is extremely simple:

RenameDirectoryFiles.ps1 'My Directory'

After which all the files under ‘My Directory’ will be renamed to ‘My Directory – 000.fileextension’.

(Orlando) sed regex kicks my ass.  I like to remove the second : in the
line. So that in 123:456:6789 it will only returns 123:456.  I can find the
first :, but I have not been able to use s/:{2}// to find the second
one, and remove the rest.

I enjoy regex (I know I’m weird, leave me alone), so I was able to provide an answer to this problem:

(@znx) Orlando: the trick is to use [^:] and \1 ..
(@znx) like:   s/\(:[^:]*\):.*/\1/

Now obviously at first glance this regex could be a bit intimating to someone who is still picking up the skills but as with most things if we break it down it becomes easier.

Working out to in, \( \):.*, that says match something with : at the end and all the character after it. The . is a special meaning “any character” and * to match multiple characters. The first match will be stored by sed and assigned into the \1 for the replacement (that is what the brackets do). Inside the brackets we have :[^:]*. The sequence [^ ] is a negated list, that means that we are asking it to match everything that is NOT inside the list, in this case :.

Putting it altogether we are saying: Match a leading : and a trailing : with any characters after it. Placing the contents between the two : in memory. Then finally we replace the contents.

% echo 123:456:6789 | sed 's/\(:[^:]*\):.*/\1/'
123:456

Sucess, however as with most things, there is more than one way to skin a cat and regex is rarely the prettiest method. So what other ways can we solve this problem?

With AWK:

% echo 123:456:6789 | awk -F: '{print $1":"$2}'
123:456

With cut:

% echo 123:456:6789 | cut -d: -f1,2
123:456

As always, experimentation with the mass of GNU tools you can find on your system will bring a greater deal of power to your tool chest. Mind you, then I wouldn’t get complements for helping would I?

(Orlando) Wow, When I grow up, I like to remember this thing like you do.  

Haha, till next time!

So the first step is relatively simple, access the Event Log and look for a single event by its event code.

set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\root\cimv2")
set colEvents = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
   ("Select * from Win32_NTLogEvent Where Logfile = 'System' and EventCode = 10")

What we did here was grab all the events with event code of 10 (a print job!). So if we count the number of events within a range then we will have basically completed a huge part of the work.

So next step is to make an interval that will be 15 minutes back from whatever time is current.

set dtmStartDate = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemDateTime")
dtmStartDate.SetVarDate DateAdd("n",-15,Now()),True

And applying that into our statement:

set colEvents = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
   ("Select * from Win32_NTLogEvent Where Logfile = 'System' and EventCode = 10" _
   & " and TimeWritten >= '" & dtmStartDate & "'")

This means that we are now collecting the events that only occurred within the last fifteen minutes. So what next, well we need to have a statement to pass to BigBrother to indicate success or failure. Fortunately enough I have another script which monitors the cluster (thanks to the awesome DeadCat repository) and it has some code to help place the file that BigBrother collects.

const HKLM = &H80000002
strBBExtPathNew = "SOFTWARE\Quest Software\BigBrother\bbnt\ExternalPath"
strBBExtPathOld = "SOFTWARE\BigBrother\bbnt\ExternalPath"
set oReg = GetObject("winmgmts:\root\default:StdRegProv")
 
oReg.GetStringValue HKLM,strBBExtPathNew,,strExtPath
if isNull(strExtPath) then
  oReg.GetStringValue HKLM,strBBExtPathOld,,strExtPath
end if
if isNull(strExtPath) then
  WScript.Quit
end if

So now we have the path to put our file in, all we need to do now is write the file and add two simple checks to see that the time is within work ours (9-5).

On Error Resume Next
 
strState = "green Printing was active within the last 15 minutes"
strBBFileName = "print"
intEventCode = 10
 
' Find out where to put the BB log files
const HKLM = &H80000002
strBBExtPathNew = "SOFTWARE\Quest Software\BigBrother\bbnt\ExternalPath"
strBBExtPathOld = "SOFTWARE\BigBrother\bbnt\ExternalPath"
set oReg = GetObject("winmgmts:\root\default:StdRegProv")
 
' Check for the BB External Path, new then old otherwise quit
oReg.GetStringValue HKLM,strBBExtPathNew,,strExtPath
if isNull(strExtPath) then
  oReg.GetStringValue HKLM,strBBExtPathOld,,strExtPath
end if
if isNull(strExtPath) then
  WScript.Quit
end if
 
' Get Computer name
set WshNetwork = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network")
strComputerName = WshNetwork
 
' Prepare file
set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
set f = fso.OpenTextFile(strExtPath & "\" & strBBFileName, 8, True)
 
' Run between 9 - 5
if Hour(Now()) < 9 then
  strState = "green Not checking as we are outwith work hours"
  f.Write strState
  set fso = Nothing
  set f = Nothing
  WScript.Quit
end if
if Hour(Now()) > 17 then
  strState = "green Not checking as we are outwith work hours"
  f.Write strState
  set fso = Nothing
  set f = Nothing
  WScript.Quit
end if
 
' Get a date 15 minutes in the past.
set dtmStartDate = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemDateTime")
dtmStartDate.SetVarDate DateAdd("n",-15,Now()),True
 
' Collect the events from eventlog within the last 15 minutes
set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\root\cimv2")
Set colEvents = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
   ("Select * from Win32_NTLogEvent Where Logfile = 'System' and " _
   & "EventCode = '" & intEventCode _
   & "' and TimeWritten >= '" & dtmStartDate & "'")
 
' If no events then alert.
if colEvents.Count = 0 then
  strState = "red No print job within the last 15 minutes"
end if
 
' Output
f.Write strState
 
set fso = Nothing
set f = Nothing
WScript.Quit

Obviously you can adjust this script to monitor for any regular event and it works well on Windows 2003 and XP machines. It is at this point I thought that I was finished. Testing this script on a Windows XP machine, no issues it was doing exactly what it was meant to. However the server I was intending on running it under was a Windows 2000 server. So I was forced to make some more changes to the script to allow it to run. The changes I made unfortunately make the script slightly harder to adjust to make it work for any event.

The first change was to the statement to collect the print job.

Set colEvents = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
  ("Select * From Win32_NTLogEvent Where Type = 'information' " _
  & "and EventCode = " & intEventCode _
  & "TimeWritten >= '" & dtmStartDate & "'")

The next change I had to make was very strange, the Count method didn’t seem to exist (strange!?) so I was forced to loop to count:

' UGLY
set intCount = 0
For Each objEvent in colEvents
  intCount = intCount + 1
Next
if intCount = 0 then
  strState = "red No print job within the last 15 minutes"
end if

Those two changes allowed me to successfully monitor a single event. Same script in Linux would have taken me seconds! Anyway at least its a working model, let’s hope not a lot more requests come through for Windows issues, especially W2K ones!

<html><head><title>Status</title></head>
<table>
<tr><td>Failed</td><td>Backup Group</td></tr>
<tr><td>Success</td><td>Another Backup Group</td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

Nothing odd there, the file is normal but when I tried this command:

$ grep -i failed status.html
$

Huh? No output, suggesting that there is no lines with the words failed on them. The same occurs with awk and sed, indeed I could not find any tool to be able to grep out the status. So the next step was to check what was odd about the file:

$ file status.html
status.html: HTML document text

Still, nothing unusual. So now I am in full head scratching mode, I open up the file with vim to see if I can discover anything strange about the file but nothing. At this point I happened to switch to more rather than cat and the result was the start of how I solved it.

$ more status.html
��<

$

Ah, so now I can see why grep and the others cannot view anything in the file. So this time I switch to vim again and check what file encoding we have:

:set fileencoding
fileencoding=ucs-2le

For those that are unaware, this is UCS-2 (little endian), also know as UTF-16. So the issue was simply that we had UTF-16 characters, now for the trick to get around it:

$ iconv -f UTF-16 -t UTF-8 status.html | grep -i failed
<tr><td>Failed</td><td>Backup Group</td></tr>
$

Tada. Once more a solution!

 (@  NoTopic) Uh oh, it's mark.
 (+      znx) listen nt .. im tired of your shit
 (         *) znx kicks the crap out of nt
 (         *) NoTopic passes it on to james
 (+      znx) um
 (+      znx) :[
 (@MonicaOff) cheer up mak
 (@MonicaOff) *hugs*
 (+      znx) aww
 (+      znx) i love you mon
 (         *) znx hugs
 (@MonicaOff) Hehe, want to go out on a date someplace? 
 (+      znx) sure!
 (+      znx) where would you like to go mon?
 (@MonicaOff) Amsterdam.
 (+      znx) ooo
 (         *) znx books the flights
 (+ JamesOff) sounds nice 
 (@  NoTopic) oh categorically abyss what do you think, talking ass?
 (+      znx) your just annoyed im not taking you nt
 (         *) znx shows nt the flight tickets
 (@  NoTopic) ooooh, impressive!
 (+      znx)  !!
 (         *) NoTopic steals the flight tickets and runs off
 (@  NoTopic) ALL MINE NOW^@~#%~£~$$~*£$$$
 (+      znx) W T F
 (         *) NoTopic sells the flight tickets on ebay
 (+      znx) NOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooo
 (         *) znx sulks at nt
 (@  NoTopic) what

Of course sometimes bmotion is just plain evil!

#!/bin/sh
# GNU GPL version 3.0 or above
# Copyright (c) 2009 Mark Sangster
 
if [ -z "$3" ]; then
  echo 'mybackup <user> <password> <host>' >&2
  exit 1
fi
 
MYUSER=$1; MYPASS=$2; MYHOST=$3
 
mysqldump -u $MYUSER -p $MYPASS -h $MYHOST -A | \
  bzip2 -9 > mysql-`date +%Y-%m-%d`.bz2

The script usage is very striaght-forward:

# mybackup user pass host

At which point you will find a file called “mysql-2009-01-27.bz2″ or similar.  Nothing to difficult!

Interestingly it didn’t initially work 100% of the time, after a little bit of testing it looked like Microsoft were temporarily throwing away some of the test e-mails. Interesting as it must mean that they look for repetitious e-mails in a bid to fight SPAM. We of course simply contacted MS and got it sorted and now the e-mails come in every hour.

What this does show us though, is that under UNIX/Linux there is a lot of different solutions that can be made, but sometimes you have to work with the tools that are there.

First up I checked to see that I was able to get a POP3 connection to the other domain, as it is hosted by Microsoft for us. Whilst I was able to connect via POP3 I was unable to login. A quick check revealed that only POP3S was being accepted. This meant that I was going to need to utilize the simple s_client tool available with OpenSSL.

So to testing:

$ openssl s_client -connect SERVER:995
.... blah blah ....
+OK The POP3 Service is ready.
USER test.user@example.com
^C
$

Hrmm, what’s going on here, the server isn’t responding to my USER. A quick brain check and I spotted my issue, line endings!

$ openssl s_client -connect SERVER:995 -crlf
.... blah blah ....
+OK The POP3 Service is ready.
USER test.user@example.com
+OK
PASS mypassword
+OK User successfully logged in.
STAT
+OK 49 2758446
QUIT
DONE

That’s more like it. Now I know that I can connect, logged and run arbitrary commands. It may be perfectly OK to manually check like this but that isn’t the reason we started this, we want an automated solution.

The most obvious solution here is expect, ugh TCL! With the above information it is easy to write a simple expect script:

#!/usr/bin/env expect
spawn openssl s_client -connect SERVER:995 -crlf
expect "+OK The POP3 service is ready."
send "USER test.user@example.com\r"
expect "+OK"
send "PASS mypassword\r"
expect "+OK User successfully logged on."
send "QUIT\r"
expect "DONE"
expect eof

Simple enough, send a command and expect a response. Obviously it helps if you understand the protocol that you are dealing with. Running that script happily logs in and then quits. Sweet, we are halfway there already!

So to recap, I plan on sending an e-mail from the first domain to my test account on the second domain and then check that the e-mail actually arrived. Thus proving that the e-mail was getting through without issue. So when I do this I will wish to get the newest e-mail in my INBOX, which may not the be the first. So the script needs some modifying.

#!/usr/bin/env expect
spawn openssl s_client -connect SERVER:995 -crlf
expect "+OK The POP3 service is ready."
send "USER test.user@example.com\r"
expect "+OK"
send "PASS mypassword\r"
expect "+OK User successfully logged on."
send "STAT\r"
expect -re "OK (.*) .*" {
  set number $expect_out(1,string)
}
send "TOP $number 1\r"
expect "\."
expect "+OK"
send "QUIT\r"
expect "DONE"
expect eof

Now expect will grab the number of e-mails in the INBOX and request the headers of the newest one. So the final step is integrating this with a simple check. Lets just use a shell script to check with:

#!/bin/sh
TS=`date +%s`
echo "Subject: TESTING $TS
 
Hi,
 
This is a test please do not delete me!
 
Thanks" | mail test.user@example.com
sleep 60
expect collect.exp | grep $TS && \
 echo "Success The E-Mail Arrived!" ||\
 echo "Failure The E-Mail Was Not Found!"

That works, a test and we have a success! We find the TS in the subject line of the e-mail. There is a minor problem here, what happens if I e-mail the test and in-between I receive some other e-mails, hrmm! OK so why don’t we dump the headers of the first few e-mails, we certainly don’t expect a rush of e-mails on a test account within a minute. Let’s change the expect script just a bit more:

#!/usr/bin/env expect
 
spawn openssl s_client -connect SERVER:995 -crlf
expect "+OK The POP3 service is ready."
send "USER test.user@example.com\r"
expect "+OK"
send "PASS mypassword\r"
expect "+OK User successfully logged on."
send "STAT\r"
expect -re "OK (.*) .*" {
  set number $expect_out(1,string)
}
send "TOP $number 1\r"
expect "\."
expect "+OK"
set number [expr $number-1]
send "TOP $number 1\r"
expect "\."
expect "+OK"
set number [expr $number-1]
send "TOP $number 1\r"
expect "\."
expect "+OK"
send "QUIT\r"
expect "DONE"
expect eof

Placing the shell script into a crontab and we are done. Yet another example of how simple scripting can achieve anything.