Tag Archives: linux

09 Jan

Linux shell script: Pause (Suspend) a process with kill signals

Linux KILL command gives you killing opportunities to use SIGNALs. In this post we’re going to Pause (or suspend) and Start an ongoing Linux process.

Problem: The requirement here is to pause a process for certain time and run it only during off hours. The process itself doesn’t have this option and also we cannot stop it in-between, as it will start from the scratch again.

Solution: To resolve this we can think of sending out signals to the process to hint it to Pause or Progress.

A signal is an asynchronous notification sent to a process or to a specific thread within the same process in order to notify it of an event that occurred. When a signal is sent, the operating system interrupts the target process’ normal flow of execution to deliver the signal.

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10 Mar

10 useful shell script code snippets | Linux

This post is collection of 10 useful unix / linux shell script code snippets I’ve often used.

Following these code snippet you will be able to answer following questions:
1. How to calculate script run-time in shell.
2. How to parse parameters / arguments to shell script.
3. How to safely change a directory in shell script.
4. How to check if a command was successful in shell script.
5. How to add timestamps in script log output.
6. How to check if a process is running.
7. How to colour your script output.
8. How to read variables from config file.
9. How to loop over files in a folder.
10. How to perform actions based on variable value using SWITCH…CASE

And a bonus snippet
11: How to send emails from shell script.

Let’s begin.
Continue Reading…

12 Nov

How to Get Stock Quote on Linux using Google ,Curl, Grep, Awk

If you are a Stock Market Addict and a Techie; normally working on Linux(es); this post will interest you as you still can get quote of your stock on your Linux prompt.

Consider, we have Google Finance url for Tata Consultancy Services Stock: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NSE:TCS

So, how do you get above stock price while you’re on Linux / Unix server?
It’s a sinlge line command and you get your stock’s current price. 🙂

curl --silent -X Get "http://www.google.com/finance?q=NSE:TCS" > /tmp/ChangeIsInevitable && cat /tmp/ChangeIsInevitable | grep -m1 -E 'span id="ref_' | awk -F ">" '{print $2}' | awk -F "<" '{print $1}'

This work for other Stock Exchanges like NYSE as well:

curl --silent -X Get "http://www.google.com/finance?q=nyse:goog" > /tmp/bgz && cat /tmp/bgz | grep -m1 -E 'span id="ref_' | awk -F ">" '{print $2}' | awk -F "<" '{print $1}' && date
617.19
Fri Nov 12 17:07:52 IST 2010

and that’s it. Well, I’m thinking thinking more about further extensions of this.
Special thanks goes to: Jignesh Bhai, Google, Curl, Grep, Awk.

07 Jan

crontab not working with dynamic date filename – rhel linux

I have done it for so many times, setting a cronjob.
Today I was tring to set a simple cronjob which will output the log file with timestamp attached filename.

Hourly running cron entry was:

0 * * * * perl demo.pl > demo-out_`date "+%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M"`.log

Running the same command on shell prompt was working fine. Execute permissions and path were proper. But it kept on failing to create the proper log!!

I changed the crontab as follows, added \ before % to escape and voila!!

Things worked !!

0 * * * * perl test.pl > test-out_`date "+\%Y-\%m-\%d_\%H-\%M"`.log

A quick lesson.

Good to note some of the date changers in linux for finding yesterdays and tomorrows and so on:
date –date=”1 days ago”
date –date=”yesterday”
date –date=”next day”
date –date=”-1 day”
date –date=’tomorrow’
date –date=’1 day’
date –date=’10 day’
date –date=’10 week’
date –date=’10 month’
date –date=’10 year’
date –date=”next Friday”
To escape problems you should learn to escape “special characters” – Krex
P.S.:This works in real life as well 😉

-- Kedar Vaijanapurkar --
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