[SOLVED] Create a desktop launcher to toggle application

[Dennola4]

I am using a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop. Last night I installed i8kutils to speed the fan up. It works....temps went from 46C-50C to 42C-46C. Right now I have two desktop launchers: one that runs $ i8kfan - 1 (low speed) and one that runs $ i8kfan - 2 (high speed). I would rather have just one launcher to run a script which toggles the two commands.

I've gotten as far as creating an empty file, naming it, making it executable, opening with Geany, beginning it with #!bin/bash.....

....and that's where I'm stuck. I have been Googling for a simple script to toggle between two commands, but I can't find anything useful. Obviously I need to learn the basics of bash scripting, but in the meantime would someone like to help an eager learner to write out a few quick lines?

Thanks.

[gapan]

Is there a command that you can run from a terminal and tell you if the current speed is high or low?

[Dennola4]

Hi Gapan,

Yes there is. Here's the man page: http://man.gnusquad.org/i8kctl/section-1/en/ Info is read from /proc/i8k which results after start-up command:

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 $ sudo /usr/sbin/modprobe i8k force=1

I'm not in front of my computer, but I'm pretty sure that when I enter:

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$ i8kfan speed

it reports either a low right-fan speed:

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-1 1

or a high right-fan speed:

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-1 2

Disclaimer: This is "remembered" output, not copied-and-pasted output. And btw, there is no left fan.

[Shador]

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#!/bin/sh

if [ "x$(i8kfan speed)" == "x-1 1" ]; then
  i8kfan - 2
else
  i8kfan - 1
fi

Should work, if you got the output right. Couldn't exactly test it though. But there's not much to test anyway.

EDIT: Ooops. I put the i8kfan - 2 / - 1 commands the wrong way round. Sorry.

[Dennola4]

.
It works. Thank you, thank you, thank you.



-Dennis in New Orleans

[Shador]

Glad I could help. It was no effort anyway.

[Dennola4]

ADDENDUM:

As an exercise I made an xfce-panel launcher to toggle xpenguins (from the Salix repo). I created a file, pasted this script, made it executable, put it in my home directory, and used the path to it (/home/dennis/Scripts/toggle_xpenguins) as the xfce-panel application launcher command.

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#!/bin/bash
if pgrep xpenguins; then
pkill xpenguins && exit
else
xpenguins -s -t "Classic Penguins"
fi

Hopefully this will help someone else out there Googling "toggle + application + launcher" until 3am like I did.

-Dennis in New Orleans

[Shador]

There's already one included in the package, which is used by the applications menu entry. It's named /usr/bin/xpenguins-menu.

[Dennola4]

Oh....hahahahaha! I knew the menu icon started it, but it never occurred to me that it might also stop it. Turns out if you actually READ it, it says "Start/Stop Xpenguins". DOH!!

Oh well, it was a fun lesson in basic bash scripting regardless.