I'm not sure if this is the right forum to ask a bash-specific question. Let me know if my question should be moved...

I'm writing a bash-script that will activate my s-video port on my computer and then start a media player (specifically noatun). When I have exited the player, I want to script to continue to finish up some things.

So my script looks something like this:

The problem is that the noatun application starts and the script continues to execute. I don't want the script to continue the execution until after I have exit noatun. (Using another application instead of noatun, e.g. kompare, "pauses" the script.)

How can I "pause" the script while noatun is running?

/TLV

It probably creates a new process and exits, so there's not an easy way to stop it. What I can thing about is to make a loop checking if it is in the process table (filtering ps result) and going out when it's not. Not a perfect solution but should work.

I was afraid that something like that would be needed. My hope was that there was some bash-scripting magic function/tool that I wasn't aware of that would help me... Oh well, suddenly it became more programming than I really wanted...

Thanks anyway,
/TLV

There are two commands you can try. The bash builtin 'wait' and 'sleep'. The wait command I don't fully understand, so I can't tell you how to use it. The sleep command is followed by a time increment: s for seconds; m for minutes; h for hours; and d for days. If you know how long noatun takes to run to completion, you can follow the noatun command with the sleep command.
Suppose noatun takes 10 seconds to run. The sleep command 'sleep 10s' will pause script execution for 10 seconds before continuing.
The wait command can be stated in such a way that the script will wait until noatun returns exit status before continuing.

The prob is that I don't know for how long noatun will run as I intend to watch movies on my TV using the computer as the player...

Ha, ha, and I thought that I had come up with the engineer's motto that I've been telling people for a couple of years now: "If it ain't broke, try to improve it."

/TLV

Hi TLV,


i wrote this small script to solve ur problem give it a try and tell me..

#! /bin/bash

atitvout -f t # To activate the s-video port on ur ATI card

noatun # Running noatun
#kcalc # dont bother about this its for testing


#********important ***************
#check where ur "pidof" is installed by doing ---> #whereis pidof
#in my case it is in /sbin/pidof so im putting it in my next line...
#*********************************


t=`/sbin/pidof noatun` # checking pid to see if noatun is running

#t=`/sbin/pidof kcalc` #dont bother about this its for testing

while [ -n "$t" ] # while noatun is running
do
echo 'UsualTuxpect' >/dev/null #simply outputting my name to /dev/null
done


if [ -z "$t" ] # If noatun process not running , 'pidof' returns null.
then
echo " "
echo "Process noatun not running."
echo " "
echo "About to deactivate s-video port "

atitvout -t l # deactivating the s-video port

fi # end of if condition

exit 0 # exiting without error




i have tried this script with kcalc and xterm and it seems to be doin the job as i have not
installed noatun on my system...


Post back as to how it went...........

DAMN!!!! I'm So excited just one away from 100

Try doing:

#!/bin/bash
atitvout -f t # To activate the s-video port on my ATI card
noatun &
wait $!
atitvout -t l # To deactivate the s-video port

HTH.

Btw, just a query for UsualTexpect:

<snip>

t=`/sbin/pidof noatun` # checking pid to see if noatun is running

#t=`/sbin/pidof kcalc` #dont bother about this its for testing

while [ -n "$t" ] # while noatun is running
do
echo 'UsualTuxpect' >/dev/null #simply outputting my name to /dev/null
done

</snip>

In case noatun is found to be running, how do you expect to exit the loop ? I guess you want to do like:

while [ -n "$t" ] # while noatun is running
do
echo 'UsualTuxpect' >/dev/null #simply outputting my name to /dev/null
t=`/sbin/pidof noatun` # checking pid to see if noatun is running
done

HTH.

My bad .. was in a hurry.. its a mistake i made .. darn!!...

completely forgot to put the line [t=`/sbin/pidof noatun`] in the while loop...

thanks dustu76 for the correction...


This is the final program with the line added..


#! /bin/bash

atitvout -f t # To activate the s-video port on ur ATI card

noatun # Running noatun



#********important ***************
#check where ur "pidof" is installed by doing ---> #whereis pidof
#in my case it is in /sbin/pidof so im putting it in my next line...
#*********************************


t=`/sbin/pidof noatun` # checking pid to see if noatun is running



while [ -n "$t" ] # while noatun is running
do
t=`/sbin/pidof noatun` # ********the line i forgot in my last post************
done


if [ -z "$t" ] # If noatun process not running , 'pidof' returns null.
then
echo " "
echo "Process noatun not running."
echo " "
echo "About to deactivate s-video port "

atitvout -t l # deactivating the s-video port

fi # end of if condition

exit 0 # exiting without error

1 members found this post helpful.

Nope, it doesn't work. What does "wait $1" mean?

/TLV

Thanks UsualTuxpert, your code is working great (I just wished there was a way to solve it more elegantly...)

Is that last if-statement really needed? The script wouldn't exit the while-loop unless it was true, right?

Thanks again,
/TLV

U dont need the if loop .... i just wrote it so that one could understand easily..
what i was doin....

go ahead and remove all the stuff u dont want...

Hi TLV,

Congrats

Its $! (As in exclamation sign) & not $1. $1 would not work.

I'm interested in seeing the results with $! ... could you pls try it out with $!

$! is the process id of the noatun which we put in background using "&" ...


HTH.

there is a little programm called "waitfor" ... and it does exactly that...you can wait for an URL, time, and I thinmk a programm too... you should have a look at it!

Greetings, Sascha

Yes, I used the "$!", it was just a typo in my post... No, it doesn't work. It get the process id, but it doesn't wait for the process to finish. When I try to run noatun not in the background (w/o '&') I get an error from the wait-command saying that "pid XX is not a child of this shell" (I get the pid from the pidof-command).


/TLV