Have you ever had to scp a file to your work machine in order to copy its contents to a mail? xclip can help you with that. It copies its stdin to the X11 buffer, so all you have to do is middle-click to paste the content of that looong file :)
This is a (last resort) way to automate applications that provide no other ways for automation, it would send 'Hello world' to the currently active window. See the manpage (and the -text and -window entries) for how to send special characters and target specific windows. An example: Using xwininfo, I get the id of my XPlanet background window: alanceil@kvirasim:19:51:0:~> xwininfo xwininfo: Please select the window about which you would like information by clicking the mouse in that window. xwininfo: Window id: 0x3600001 "Xplanet 1.2.0" Absolute upper-left X: 0 (..etc..) Now I use xvkbd to tell it to close itself: xvkbd -xsendevent -window 0x3600001 -text "Q" Obviously, the best way is to put these commands in a shellscript - just make sure to include a short sleep (sleep .1 should suffice) after each xvkbd call, or some programs will become confused.
That works in all softs, CLI or GUI... I don't want to waste time to all the time typing the same stuff . So, I have that command in my window manager shortcuts ( meta+l ). All the window managers have editable shortcuts AFAIK. If not, or you don't want to use it that way, you can easily use the xbindkeys soft.
I you're using kde4, you can run :
systemsettings
then open "inputs actions" and create a new shortcut.
For Gnome take a look there : http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-create-keyboard-shortcuts-in-gnome/
A more advanced one, with strings and newlines :
xvkbd -xsendevent -text "---8<-----\nToday date is: $(date +%Y%m%d)\n---8<-----"
For complicated or long paste, you can feed xvkbd with a file :
xvkbd -xsendevent -file <file>
You can simulate ^C ( control+c ) too or others combinations of keys :
xvkbd -text "\C\Ac"
There's no man page nor help ( On my Archlinux distro ), but you can see online doc there : http://homepage3.nifty.com/tsato/xvkbd/
Show Sample Output
Requires: imagemagick and graphviz
On Debian systems, displays a graph of package dependencies. Works also with other image formats, like svg :
apt-cache dotty bash | dot -T svg | display
This will save your open windows to a file (~/.windows).
To start those applications:
cat ~/.windows | while read line; do $line &; done
Should work on any EWMH/NetWM compatible X Window Manager.
If you use DWM or another Window Manager not using EWMH or NetWM try this:
xwininfo -root -children | grep '^ ' | grep -v children | grep -v '<unknown>' | sed -n 's/^ *\(0x[0-9a-f]*\) .*/\1/p' | uniq | while read line; do xprop -id $line _NET_WM_PID | sed -n 's/.* = \([0-9]*\)$/\1/p'; done | uniq -u | grep -v '^$' | while read line; do ps -o cmd= $line; done > ~/.windows
Show Sample Output
This starts a very basic X session, with just a simple xterm. You can use this xterm to launch your preferred distant session.
ssh -X john@otherbox gnome-session
Try also startkde or fluxbox or xfce4-session.
To switch between your two X servers, use CTRL+ALT+F7 and CTRL+ALT+F8.
Set up X forwarding in PuTTY, with X display location set to :0.0
Launch PuTTY ssh session.
Launch Xming. Make sure that display is set to :0.0 (this is default).
echo "I'm going to paste this into WINDERS XP" | xsel -i
will insert the string into the windows cut and paste buffer.
Thanks to Dennis Williamson at stackoverflow.com for sharing...
when using Gnome or KDE, you will have a hard time getting a screenshot of something like a login screen, or any other screen that occurs before the desktop environment is up and monitoring the printscreen key. (this probably applies for other DEs as well, but I haven't used them) What this command is meant to do is take a screenshot of an X window using a command you can run from your virtual terminals (actual text terminals, not just an emulator) To do this: Press CTRL+ALT+F1 to go to a virtual (text) terminal once your login window comes up Login to the virtual terminal and enter the command (you'll have to type it in) You should now have a file called screenshot.png in your home directory with your screenshot in it. For those of you who are new to the virtual terminal thing, you can use CTRL+ALT+F7 to get back to your regular GUI From http://www.gnome.org
This forces X back to its maximum resolution configured. To get a list, type `xrandr'.
When you run an X program from a terminal you can see any errors. But when it's run from another X program (eg from a menu item, from your fluxbox 'keys' file etc) it might just die and you see nothing (except perhaps in .xsession-errors). Instead, launch it via this command and you'll see the termination status, stderr and stdout. eg: "xlaunch firefox" or "xlaunch 'echo stdout; echo stderr >&2; false'": 'echo stdout; echo stderr >&2; false' failed with error 1 STDERR: stderr STDOUT: stdout
There are different ways to run X, I prefer to run it without xdm/gdm. The problem is you can't lock X because one can press Ctrl+Alt+F1, press Ctrl+Z and kill you X locking process. Of course you can disable Ctrl+Alt* or Ctrl+Alt+Backspace keys, but it's inconvinient if you really need to switch into console.
bash output is inserted into the clipboard, then mousepad is started and the clipboard content is pasted. xsel and xdotool needs to be installed. Instead of the mousepad any other editor can be used. I've successfully tested the Sublime Text Editor and it opens a new tab for each new paste. Check Sample output for a usage example. This command is originated from here - http://goo.gl/0q9UT4 Show Sample Output
You can use it to connect to remote windows machine and start some scritps that need user login
Clears your clipboard if xsel is installed on your machine.
If your xsel is dumb, you can also use
xsel --clear --clipboard
This command first determines whether a second screen is connected. If this is the case, it sets the screen's RGB gamma via xrandr. Useful for cheap or slightly defective monitors with a tint. In this example a yellowing/champagne color deviation is compensated for by decreasing the red and the green portion of the image.
change keyboard layout in X
in Cygwin, start X server fullscreen ... For openGL, check here: http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~wongam/d18_cygwin_opengl_setup/cygwin_opengl_setup.html
# from xfce session to avoid keyboard shortcut clashing # start xephyr in VGA1 monitor: Xephyr -keybd ephyr,,,xkbmodel=evdev,xkblayout=it -listen tcp -ac -reset -output VGA1 :5 # then start an xterm locally export DISPLAY=:5.0 xterm # and remote ssh (no X fw needed if local tcp with access disablesd (-tcp -ac) => UNSECURE!!! ssh remote-host export DISPLAY=notebook:5.0 xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources xterm -geometry 132x50-0+0 # start awesome dbus-launch $(which awesome) dex -a -e Awesome Show Sample Output
ssh compresion -C option ... on slow connection VNC performs better but in local LAN native secure X protocol is an option Show Sample Output
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