Relatively often I have to run some command every n seconds, to see what is happening.
To do this I generally resort to writing simple one liner in shell:
=$ while true; do some command; sleep 5; done
In my work I'm often in situation where I want to restart remote server, and then immediately connect to it over ssh.
This can be done by repeating ssh HOST in shell, but it gets tedious.
I assume most of you are familiar with watch program. If not – it shows, periodically, output of a command.
I was missing similar functionality for tmux, especially when I have multiple windows/panes.
So I wrote tmux_watch_many.
How to use it?
Continue reading New shell_util to watch output in multiple tmux panes at once
I am doing quite a lot of work inside tmux. I especially love that I can start multiple windows/panes and use them to run the same thing across multiple servers, while still having normal shell access between steps.
This thing was greatly improved when I wrote tmux_send_to_many, but one thing was missing – waiting for the thing, running in tmux window to end.
Generally, I had to look at all the windows, and decide when to launch next step on my own.
Not anymore.
I assume that everyone reading my blog understands GROUP BY clause in SQL.
Lately I've been doing some maintenance work, and found myself in a position that I could really use similar thing in shell.
Tmux is terminal multiplexer. Kinda like old screen, but with much more functionality.
When I work on my servers, it's pretty common that I have to do the same things to multiple servers. To make my life easier I start tmux, and in there start many “windows", each related to work on single server.
I name the windows in a way that let's me quickly find them, without false positives.
For example, if I'd have to upgrade servers db1..db5 then I'd create windows “up-db1" .. “up-db5", and each window would work on single server.
This is already scriptable – let's assume I'd want to show uptime in all of the windows, I can:
tmux lsw -F '#W' | grep -E '^up-db[0-9]+$' | xargs -r -d$'\n' -I% tmux send-keys -t % uptime Enter
But this gets tedious fast.
Continue reading Automation for doing stuff in multiple windows in tmux
So, you just installed your PostgreSQL, and you have no idea how to use it – there is no icon in the menu of your OS, so how can you use it? Well, with the dreadful command line.
Of course – some people will never get used to textual programs. They need a GUI. That's fine. Not understandable for me, but who am I to judge. But knowing at least a basic things about standard command line tools for PostgreSQL can save you a lot of headache in some cases. Plus – you always have them so these are treated as default programs to use.
Continue reading Command line tools? In XXI century? No way! Yes way!