cmd line executable web link without a seperate batch file - hyperlink

SO I want to have a web link that will- open up cmd.exe, take input from a user (store it in a variable for use later in the script), and then be able to execute a script, all these without a separate batch file being involved.
Basically : Click link ---> Cmd opens up and asks for input ----> takes input and executes a script.
Example: Click link ---> Cmd opens up and asks for Username ----> Looks up username from a directory.
I have no idea how to do this. Any ideas??
OS involved: Windows 7

Related

How to use adb inside Robot Framework script?

I'm testing an application using Android device. I'm using adb-tool to add some text to certain text fields in the application. Here is one example command:
adb shell input text "foofas"
With above command, I can add text to text field from command line. However, if I try to use that command in my Robot Framework script like this:
run process adb shell input text "foofas"
This above won't work anymore. In my understanding, command line command should be working. Error is something like this:
FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file
specified
Any hints to me?

Alternative to using --squash when building docker images on Windows using local files

We have some local installers and zip files that we use to build our docker images. It is easy to get this to work in a Dockerfile:
FROM mcr.microsoft.com/windows/nanoserver
COPY myinstaller.exe .
RUN myinstaller.exe; \
del myinstaller.exe
The problem here is that it produces a layer for the COPY line, which increases the size of the image. A common work-around for this is to have one RUN line, that downloads the file from the Internet, runs commands, and then deletes the installation file. The problem, as written above, is that the installers are on the local filesystem.
I found that there is a --squash command for docker:
docker build --squash -t mytestimage .
This does exactly what I want: It gives me an image without this extra installer file that is not necessary. To run this command, you need to enable experimental features though. There is also an open issue to simply remove this feature:
https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/34565
Is there some alternative way of using local installers in a Dockerfile when running on Windows, that doesn't involve setting up a server to provide the files?
We ended up setting up nginx to provide files when building. On our build server, the machine building our docker images and the server that has the installer files have a very good connection between them, so downloading huge files is not a real problem.
When it comes to --squash, it is bugged for Docker on Windows. Here is the relevant issue for it:
https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/31468
There is an issue to move --squash out of experimental, but it doesn't seem to have a lot of support:
https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/38657
The alternative that some people propose instead of --squash is multi stage build, discussion here:
https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/34565
There is an alternative to --squash, if you have local installer files, you don't want to set up a web server, and you would like your docker image to be small, and you are running Windows: Use mapped drives.
In Windows, you can share folders with other users on your network. Docker containers are like another computer that is running on your physical machine, and it can access these network drives.
First set up a new user, for example username share and password password1. Create a folder somewhere on your computer. Then right click it, click properties, and then go to the Sharing tab and click "Share". Find the user that you have just created, using the little dropdown menu and Find people ..., and share the folder with this user.
Create a folder somewhere for your test project. Create a batch file setupshare.bat that looks like this:
#echo off
for /f "tokens=2 delims=:" %%i in ('ipconfig ^| findstr "Default Gateway"') do (
set hostip=%%i
goto :end
)
:end
set hostip=%hostip: =%
net use O: \\%hostip%\vms /USER:share password1
The first part of this file is only to find the ip address that the docker container can use to access its host computer. It is not the most pretty thing I've ever put together, so let me know if there's a better way!
It uses a for-loop, as that is the way to save the output of a command to a variable in batch files. The command is ipconfig, and we pipe it to findstr and searches for Default Gateway. We need to use ^| instead of just | because it is in a for-loop. The first part of the for-loop divides each line from the command on the delimiter, which is : in this case, and we only take the second token. The for-loop only handles the first line, if there are multiple entries with a Default Gateway. This script doesn't work if there are multiple entries and the first one is not the correct one.
The line set hostip=%hostip: =% is to remove a space at the start of the string.
We then have the IP address that we want to use stored in hostip. We use this in the net use command, which will map O:\ to shared folder vms on the machine with IP hostip. We use the username share and the password password1. Note that this is a very bad way of handling passwords, as they kind of should be secret!
With a batch file like this, we can set up a Dockerfile in this way:
# escape=`
FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/sdk:3.0
COPY setupshare.bat .
RUN setupshare.bat && `
copy O:\file.txt file.txt
The RUN command will first call setupshare.bat that sets up the network share properly. We can then use any file that we shared, for example a huge installer, and install the things that we want. In this case I have only shared a test file file.txt to see that it works, so just change that line.
I would still advice everyone to just set up a little web server, for example nginx, and use the standard way of writing Dockerfiles, with downloading files and running it in the same RUN command. That's what people expect when they see a Dockerfile, and it should be a more robust solution.
We can also hope that the Docker people either makes a COPY command that can copy, run, and delete installers in the same layer, or that --squash is implemented properly.

I have to run "/bin/bash --login" everytime to use rake/rails commands?

whenever I switch directory in my terminal, I have to run the command "/bin/bash --login" before I can run rails/rake related commands. If I don't, I get an error saying "the program "rails" can be found in the following packages: ..."
Any advice?
By default some servers do not allow this due to permissions reason. You can place this in
~/.bashrc and it will automatically work when you open a new terminal
As per bash man page.
When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started, bash
reads and executes commands from ~/.bashrc, if that file exists. This
may be inhibited by using the --norc option. The --rcfile file option
will force bash to read and execute commands from file instead of
~/.bashrc.
When bash is started non-interactively, to run a shell script, for
example, it looks for the variable BASH_ENV in the environment,
expands its value if it appears there, and uses the expanded value as
the name of a file to read and execute. Bash behaves as if the
following command were executed:
if [ -n "$BASH_ENV" ]; then . "$BASH_ENV"; fi but the value of the
PATH variable is not used to search for the file name.
The file is just shell commands. It is typically used to change prompts, set environment variables, and define shell procedures. Traditionally, the file .profile is used for this purpose, but bash has so many extensions that it needs its own startup file for users that want to put bashisms in startup files.
Easy solution:
Just open terminal. GO to Edit menu from terminal navigation bar, Select "Profile Preferences", It will open "edit profile pop-up". Select "Title and Command" button and "check Run Command as login shell"
ctrl + alt + t -> Edit -> Profile Preferences -> Title and Command -> Check Run command as login shell
Close the terminal and open again. Next time you don't need to "/bin/bash --login"

sudo: script launched from another script won't redirect standard output

I'm using AIX 5.3 with sudo 1.6.9p23. Sudoers file grants user fcomartin permission to run any command as user oas:
fcomarti ALL=(oas) ALL
User oas has a bash script called menu, from which it launches another scripts depending on the selected option. The problem is that some of the secondary scripts redirects standard output to text file "temp" which is owned by oas user, when this happens the system tells me that user do not have the right permissions to write.
User fcomarti uses ksh, then the used command is as follows:
sudo -u oas bash menu
(bash because user oas uses bash) Menu starts, menu launches monitorAv script, inside monitorAv is the line echo > temp, it then tells user fcomarti it do not have the right permissions to write.
The script is running as user oas, not as user fcomarti, so if it is trying to write to a file in a directory owned by fcomarti it is probably not going to have the appropriate permissions.
You could make user oas share a group with user fcomarti and then grant group write permissions on certain directories, or you can have the script output to a location that is writeable by the oas user (e.g., /tmp, or some directory you have explicitly created for that purpose, such as the HOME directory for user oas).
I've finally solved the problem, the sintaxis of sudo is as follows:
sudo -u oas bash -c "cd /Oas/bin; menu"
This is because some of the secondary scripts launched by menu, needs an absolute route to work.

launch a gui program from windows console and then make it 'detach' itself

I'm trying to modify a legacy Delphi 5 app so that it can be launched either from it's icon/via Explorer, or from the console (command-line). When it gets launched from the console, I want the program to detach itself from the console process, so that the console can continue to execute other instructions without waiting for my program to terminate.
I want to use it in a 'batch' file, such that I might have;
#echo off
rem step 1 - do some stuff here
rem
rem step 2 - launch my app
c:\myfolder\myapp
rem
rem step 3 - do some more stuff here
and that the console process moves on to step 3 straight after launching my app in step 2.
I'm sure I've done this before, many years ago, but I'm puzzled as to what exactly I did. I don't want to write a tiny console app 'launcher' for my main Windows app - I'm 95% sure that there was a way of doing this within a 'normal' Delphi GUI app.
I guess I could use vbscript or powershell or something to 'execute' my program with some kind of 'nowait' parameter but the client is familiar with batch files and I don't really want to upset the applecart by suggesting he change his scripts or install additional stuff - I'm making changes to the executable anyway and it would be great to tick this box for him too.
Anyone? :-)
I think the START command is the one you're looking for. It starts a process separately to the console and it's part of cmd.exe so no extra software required.
But I was of the opinion that GUI apps did this anyway. Maybe Delphi is different to MSVC.
Open up a console and type "start /?".
As itowlson states in the comments, GUI application do generally detach themselves. It's the actual cmd.exe shell doing trickery in that it waits for it to finish if it's running from a cmd file.
So "notepad" from the prompt will start it in the background but "notepad" within a cmd file will wait. Within the cmd file, you need to use:
start notepad.exe
or whatever your application is called (not notepad, presumably).
try: start "" c:\myfolder\myapp (with the empty quotes)
I think Microsoft has been solve this problem in Windows Power Shell.
In command prompt, even if you use "start ", you cant detach your process really from cmd. If you close the cmd, you will die, suddenly. But In windows Power Shell, you can detach your program or command from Power Shell as default.
So, if you prefer to use Windows Power Shell instead of Command Prompt, just do this:
PS: X:\> <your command>
Here's one way that I've found. It works quite cleanly and doesn't leave any extra cmd windows around (the recommendation to use start c:\myfolder\myapp does not work:
cmd /c dir && c:\myfolder\myapp
To quote the CMD help:
/C Carries out the command specified by string and then terminates
Note that multiple commands separated by the command separator '&&'
are accepted for string if surrounded by quotes.
Apparently it notices that the dir command terminates and exits, even though your app was launched on the same command. Chalk it up to one of Windows vagaries.
u should use the cd command example
cd/
cd myfolder
start myapp
exit

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