Script to launch open a site repeatedly at regular intervals.

Here is a script which can be used to open a website at regular intervals and close the browser cleanly, repeatedly as long as you don't force close the script. This could be useful when you want to monitor something on a site or a wait for some news on a site and don't want to keep opening it manually.

#!/bin/bash echo "Enter the full website that has to be opened" read website echo "Enter the delay time, in seconds, between consecutive openings" read time echo "Enter the delay time,in seconds, for which the site should be kept open" read time_open while true do firefox $website & sleep $time_open wmctrl -c firefox sleep $time done

If you do not want to use firefox, you can replace the firefox command with the command to launch the browser of your choice.
Save the above script as run_repeat.sh, and execute it. bash run_repeat.sh

The script will prompt you to enter the website and delay times Enter the full website that has to be opened http://google.com Enter the delay time, in seconds, between consecutive openings 30 Enter the delay time,in seconds, for which the site should be kept open 30

The script will keep launching firefox and opening the site http://google.com, wait for 30 seconds and close it and launch it again after a delay of 30 seconds.

Create 2017 on the terminal using any character

Here is a bash script which can be used to create the text 2017 on the terminal using any characher of your choice.

#!/bin/bash #create 2017 on terminal using any user specified character str_dwn() { rows=$1 s_start=$2 char=$4 str_st_row=$3 rows_end=$((str_st_row+rows)) for((i=str_st_row;i<rows_end;i++)) do tput cup $i $s_start printf "$char " done echo"" } backslash() { b_st_row=$1 b_st_cols=$2 b_char=$3 b_r_end=$((b_st_row + 5 )) for((p=b_st_row;p<b_r_end;p++)) do tput setaf $4 tput cup $p $b_st_cols printf "$b_char " ((b_st_cols++)) done echo"" } forward() { f_st_row=$1 f_st_cols=$2 f_len=$3 f_char=$4 f_r_end=$((f_st_row + $f_len)) for((i=f_st_row;i<f_r_end;i++)) do tput cup $i $f_st_cols printf "$f_char " ((f_st_cols--)) done echo"" } horizontal() { hrow=$2 hstart=$1 hcols=$3 char=$4 end=$((hstart + hcols)) for((i=hstart;i<=end;i++)) do tput cup $hrow $i printf "$char" done echo"" } gen_rand() { num1=$1 if [ $num1 -eq 0 ] then temp=$(($RANDOM % 2)) rand=$((temp + 2)) else temp=$(($RANDOM % 5)) rand=$((temp + num1)) fi } two() { hstart_2=$1 hrow_be=$2 hcols_2=$3 char=$4 color=$5 set_color horizontal $hstart_2 $hrow_be $hcols_2 "$char" st_row_2=$((hrow_be+1)) f_st_cols_2=$((hstart_2+hcols_2)) forward $st_row_2 $f_st_cols_2 5 "$char" $color hstart_2_lo=$start hrow_2_lo=$((hrow_be+6)) hcols_2_lo=5 horizontal $hstart_2_lo $hrow_2_lo $hcols_2_lo "$char" } zero() { set_color hstart_0=$((f_st_cols_2 +4)) hcols_0=5 horizontal $hstart_0 $hrow_be $hcols_0 "$char" str_dwn_col_0=$hstart_0 str_dwn_row_0=$((hrow_be + 1)) str_dwn 6 $str_dwn_col_0 $str_dwn_row_0 "$char" hstart_0_lo=$((f_st_cols_2 +4)) hcols_0_lo=6 hrow_0_lo=$((hrow_be+6)) horizontal $hstart_0 $hrow_0_lo $hcols_0 "$char" str_dwn_col_rig_0=$((hstart_0 +5)) str_dwn_row_rig_0=$((hrow_be + 1)) str_dwn 6 $str_dwn_col_rig_0 $str_dwn_row_rig_0 "$char" } one() { set_color str_dwn_col_1=$((str_dwn_col_rig_0 + 4)) str_dwn_row_1=$((hrow_be)) str_dwn 7 $str_dwn_col_1 $str_dwn_row_1 "$char" } seven() { set_color hstart_7_top=$((str_dwn_col_1 +4)) hcols_7_top=4 hrow_7_top=$((hrow_be)) horizontal $hstart_7_top $hrow_7_top $hcols_7_top "$char" hstart_7_mid=$((str_dwn_col_1+8)) hcols_7_mid=4 hrow_7_mid=$((hrow_be)) forward $hrow_7_mid $hstart_7_mid 7 "$char" $color } set_color(){ color=$RANDOM color=$((color%6)) tput setaf $color } cols=`tput cols` mid=$((cols/2)) start=$((mid-16)) echo "What character do you want to use" read char tput clear rows=5 begin_row=2 num_cols=6 two $start $begin_row $num_cols "$char" $color;zero;one;seven tput setaf 0 tput cup 9 0

Copy the script and save it as 2017.sh. Open a terminal and type bash 2017.sh

It will prompt for the characher which should be used. What character do you want to use *

We have entered "*" as the characher, and you should see the output as shown below, the colors will be chosen randomly.

Close application cleanly from command line

In Linux we can close any application from the terminal by using the commands

kill pkill

Both these commands will close the application, but not in a clean way ut it will kill them abruptly, for example if we are running firefox and we use

pkill firefox

Firefox will be killed abruptly and when we next open it, firefox will ask us whethe we want to restore the previous session as it was not closed properly.

ON the ther hand if we want to close the application cleanly we can use the command

wmctrl

To kill fiefox cleanly all we will have to do is

wmctrl -c firefox

Firefox will exit cleanly and not get killed in an abrupt manner.

wmctrl can be installed from the package manger in debian based systems using apt

sudo apt-get install wmctrl