Test if program is ever running (not sleeping) over a time period?

[Merrattic]

I promise I have searched on this high and low (not just on ubuntuforums) and can't seem to find an answer. Here is the scenario:

I am using mplayer to run a slideshow of jpg images all day. (Yes I know there is feh and fbi, but this is being done without X against the framebuffer inside gnuscreen, so fbi won't work, and mplayer "does")

Each image is on screen for @ 60 seconds then changes to the next.

Watching htop, mplayer is sleeping (S) for most of the time, then when the time comes to change the image it starts running (R) then goes back to sleep (S).

My problem is that at some point each day (random) mplayer freezes up, and stops changing images, even though it still displays an image on screen. htop reports that mplayer is (S).

How can I run a monitor like "top" on mplayer for say a two minute period to check if mplayer ever goes to (R) (or has an increase in CPU usage) ?

I can then script to restart mplayer if no (R) is found.

TIA

[ofnuts]

I think you are tackling the problem from the wrong end. If mplayer is mostly sleeping even if it runs fine you'll have a very hard time differentiating the good sleep from the bad one.

But unless mplayer has a cache, the most recent last access time in the set of files should regularly change... If all files are in the same directory, this is the output of:


stat -c '%X' $dir/* | sort -rn | head -1

[Vaphell]

another way would be to put mplayer in a loop with shorter playlists, even if it fails, next step will fix it.
Btw, why not display images one by one in a loop? Is there a reason why the whole list must be loaded at once?

[Merrattic]

@ ofnuts

I'll give that a try, thanks :)

@ Vaphell

Shorter playlists had crossed my mind, or to run some thing like asciiquarium and weatheraspect every now and then, but as I said in the OP mplayer can freeze at anytime.

Doing image by image in a loop with mplayer seemed a bit overkill at the time (?) and I am guessing I would get a blank screen during each change, but I'll try that too as it would overcome the freezing issue too. Thanks :)


What I am surprised about is that there doesn't appear to be a "constant" / "live" monitoring tool, only ones that look at "now" .....:?

[Merrattic]

@ ofnuts

The commands works, and I can see how I can use it :) but none of the files have an access date that relates to "today". All files are renamed randomly each day to shuffle the display sequence. This is shown in "change", but access time and date remains the date I installed the file, which was weeks ago?

[rnerwein]

hi
whats about a little shell script - show only how to
ps -ef | grep process_to_watch
cd /proc/PID_process_to_watch
in a loop
cat sched > /tmp/is_running1
sleep some_seconds
cat sched > /tmp/is_running2
diff /tmp/is_running1 /tmp/is_running2
if there is no difference - do what you want

ciao

[ofnuts]

@ ofnuts

The commands works, and I can see how I can use it :) but none of the files have an access date that relates to "today". All files are renamed randomly each day to shuffle the display sequence. This is shown in "change", but access time and date remains the date I installed the file, which was weeks ago?

This is on a Linuxish file system (ext2/3/4, reiserfs)? Or in a filesystem mounted wit the option to not use atime

What says 'stat' alone on one of these files?

[Merrattic]

I used stat to show me the access times :) It is on a CLI ubuntu built from mini iso - ext4 fs. NO X.

@ Vaphell

my little script to loop mplayer, gives a momentary blink between images though


#!/bin/bash

FILES="~/Pictures/*.jpg"

for F in $FILES

do

mplayer -geometry 0:0 mf://"$F" -idle -fixed-vo -vf scale=1024:600 &
sleep 3
killall -9 mplayer

done

Any improvements?

@ rnerwien

It needs to constantly monitor to catch mplayer when/if it starts running...

[Habitual]

How can I run a monitor like "top" on mplayer for say a two minute period to check if mplayer ever goes to (R) (or has an increase in CPU usage) ?http://collectl.sourceforge.net/ may be useful in this case.
You can actually tell it to run for 12 hours and then play it all back at your convenience. Very clever stuff.

[Merrattic]

Ah, collectl, that's more like it. :D Here is some output on mplayer, you should be able to see when mplayer starts and closes:


~$ collectl --procfilt f /usr/bin/mplayer

#<----CPU[HYPER]-----><----------Disks-----------><----------Network---------->
#cpu sys inter ctxsw KBRead Reads KBWrit Writes KBIn PktIn KBOut PktOut
1 0 272 408 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
16 2 531 506 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2
2 0 339 546 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
9 7 430 821 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 227 416 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 239 437 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 277 525 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 564 1078 0 0 16 3 0 0 0 0
1 0 256 472 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 527 984 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
4 1 473 806 4 1 0 0 3 10 0 0
5 0 457 856 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
22 4 708 902 2116 28 0 0 0 0 0 0
9 1 688 1230 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5 1 465 808 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
26 5 1081 1590 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
2 0 426 796 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
9 3 1981 3476 40 8 20 3 0 1 0 0
13 6 987 1393 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 << mplayer started up @ here
26 11 861 792 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
38 12 1088 870 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
26 10 915 850 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
#<----CPU[HYPER]-----><----------Disks-----------><----------Network---------->
#cpu sys inter ctxsw KBRead Reads KBWrit Writes KBIn PktIn KBOut PktOut
26 9 879 810 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
34 15 1393 1707 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
19 3 1572 1556 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 1 866 1123 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 1 727 1037 0 0 0 0 2 5 0 0
14 1 758 1139 0 0 0 0 2 5 0 0
13 0 707 1044 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
13 1 752 1147 0 0 16 3 0 0 0 0
15 0 774 1104 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
14 0 715 1025 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 0 801 1183 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1
14 0 749 1129 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
16 0 789 1141 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 1 731 1055 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 1 784 1143 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
16 0 777 1148 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 1 756 1033 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 1 793 1134 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
16 1 857 1231 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
18 1 971 1455 0 0 12 3 0 0 0 0
15 1 825 1164 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
34 10 1487 2283 0 0 0 0 3 10 0 0
#<----CPU[HYPER]-----><----------Disks-----------><----------Network---------->
#cpu sys inter ctxsw KBRead Reads KBWrit Writes KBIn PktIn KBOut PktOut
19 0 987 1304 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 2 798 1091 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 1 762 959 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
16 1 763 1088 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 1 735 953 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
14 1 765 1146 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
17 0 836 1133 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
16 1 742 1053 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 0 793 1154 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
12 0 731 1038 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
16 1 815 1208 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
16 1 740 1067 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
18 1 941 1337 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
14 2 815 1136 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1
1 0 248 452 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 << mplayer stopped @ here
1 0 250 424 0 0 0 0 3 11 0 2
1 0 287 441 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 233 419 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 316 516 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
8 6 434 826 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 224 413 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 241 439 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
#<----CPU[HYPER]-----><----------Disks-----------><----------Network---------->
#cpu sys inter ctxsw KBRead Reads KBWrit Writes KBIn PktIn KBOut PktOut
1 0 224 412 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 254 471 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 222 408 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 242 426 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 293 453 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 309 577 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Next problem (:)) how to capture a cpu spike as above in a bash script and convert to a variable of "Yes" ?? (am guessing some sed and awk and a greater than comparison?)

[Bodsda]

Assuming the output is delivered line by line, you can pipe to awk to get just the first column


command | awk '{print $1}'

Store the output, or run your comparison directly against that in the if clause.

Bodsda

[Habitual]

interactive mode is cool, but turn on collection for the I/O

http://collectl.sourceforge.net/ProcessIOStats.html
(http://collectl.sourceforge.net/ProcessIOStats.html)

[Merrattic]

Hmmmm finding collectl too complicated to get to the info I want and to script it all in. Also running mplayer in a loop is causing script std output to break through the image on the terminal (despite my efforts to silence terminal output with "> /dev/null 2>&1" and other such switches) :(

Will perhaps look at a crontab job which simply restarts every hour or so, and put up with a blank screen for a minute or so (image random renaming mostly)

Thanks for all the help though, and collectl is a cool cli tool :)

[Habitual]

Hmmmm finding collectl too complicated to get to the info I want and to script it all in. Also running mplayer in a loop is causing script std output to break through the image on the terminal (despite my efforts to silence terminal output with "> /dev/null 2>&1" and other such switches) :(

Will perhaps look at a crontab job which simply restarts every hour or so, and put up with a blank screen for a minute or so (image random renaming mostly)

Thanks for all the help though, and collectl is a cool cli tool :)

You are correct, whatever you seem to be doing with "mplayer in loops" and redirects, AND cron won't be solved by using collectl.
But I'm certain you'll figure it out.

Don't thank me, next time I need to use collectl, I am calling on you.

Good Luck.

[Merrattic]

Revisited this issue and eventually came up with a small bash script using top to capture a "running" (as opposed to sleeping) process:


#!/bin/bash

while : # infinite loop until condition satisfied
do
if top -bcn 1 | grep "mplayer" | grep "R"; then
# "Do Something"
break
fi
done

Needs more work to do what I want but just showing the basics for now ;)

EDIT

Final script in place:


#!/bin/bash

if top -d 1 -bcn 180 | grep "mplayer" | grep "R"; then
echo "Running"
else
echo passwd | sudo -S shutdown -r now
fi

and a crontab job:


*/10 * * * * /home/dpf/running.sh

The "180" means that top will look every second for 3 minutes. If it can grep an "R" in that time (images currently on screen for @ 2.5 mins) then all is OK, if it can't then it restarts the PC (lazy I know, will work on better solution, but it reboots so quickly, it makes not much difference). The crontab runs every 10 minutes. Only problem I have spotted is that sometimes mplayer doesn't move from S to R when it changes pictures (or this hapens so fast I don't see it or top doesn't capture it. top allows fractions of seconds so adjusting the runtime might sort this out. Would be easier if I could figure out a way to capture CPU % from top instead of S & R.....

[EDIT]

Neater solution without having to reboot:


#!/bin/bash

if top -d 1 -bcn 180 | grep "mplayer" | grep "R"; then
echo "Running"
else
screen -X quit #(stops gnu-screen)
echo passwd | sudo -S openvt -f -c 1 ./myscript.sh #(restarts script on actual physical display)
fi

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2144422&p=12644806#post12644806