[solved but questions] Lightweight alternative to alunn

Question

I was wondering if there was a lighter alternative to alunn. I know that there are a lot of GUI frontends for pacman and I've looked into those which looked promising from the list on the wiki but most of them do too much or they don't do it correctly (in my opinion ).
Essentially, I would like something which would just notify me of updates to installed apps from at least the official repositories. Ideally, it would do the same for apps installed from AUR. I absolutely do not want something with the ability to upgrade my system. Nor do I want something which will update the package databases. That is, it must not run pacman -Sy (or pacman -Syu) unless in a fakeroot environment. It should not need root privileges for anything, ever.
A systray icon would be nice but is not absolutely essential.
The main problem with alunn is that it pulls in a lot of gnome dependencies, including gvfs and various other gnome things. gvfs is creating problems for rsync backup and, while I'm sure this is avoidable, it made me realise that the only reason I have it installed is for alunn and I thought maybe I could find something which was either generally lighter or hooked into kde/qt dependencies which I've already got installed. If it could also check for AUR updates, that would be the icing on the cake.
I was also wondering about just scripting a cron job but I'm not sure how to run a cron job as an ordinary user in Linux and I've had no luck getting notifications to work from cron jobs.
Last edited by cfr (2012-06-11 20:36:56)

Answer 1

I still really have the same questions. That is, I'd still like to know the answers. However, I found something which at least seems to work by finding a sort of answer to (1) though I'm far from sure that this is how it should be done...
This is very heavily based on the original versions. (The cron job is probably identical or almost so and the basic notification script will be similar. The main difference is the script I'm using to get the notifications to behave themselves. I'm just including everything here for completeness - I'm certainly not claiming authorship!)
I installed a script at /usr/local/bin/pacmandbcheck-notifications:
#!/bin/bash -
# ref.: http://www.andreascarpino.it/blog/posts/hey-youve-n-outofdated-packages-part-ii/
# instructions: add to user crontab
# mangled by cfr
PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin
export PATH
DISPLAY=:0
export DISPLAY
if test -x /usr/bin/on_ac_power; then
/usr/bin/on_ac_power &> /dev/null
if test $? -eq 1; then
exit 0
fi
fi
fakedb=/dev/shm/fakepacdb
[[ -d "$fakedb" ]] || exit 0
enwau=$(pacman --dbpath "$fakedb" -Qqu)
#pkgs=$(pacman --dbpath "$fakedb" -Qqu | wc -l)
pkgs=$(echo $enwau | wc -w)
#aurpkgs=$(cower -udf 2> /dev/null | wc -l)
aurpkgs=0
unset msg1
unset msg2
unset packages
if [[ ${pkgs} -gt 0 ]]; then
msg1="${pkgs} in pacman"
fi
if [[ ${aurpkgs} -gt 0 ]]; then
msg2=" ${aurpkgs} in AUR"
fi
let packages=${pkgs}+${aurpkgs}
echo $enwau > /tmp/hysbysu.$$
enwau=$(cat /tmp/hysbysu.$$)
rm /tmp/hysbysu.$$
if [[ ${packages} -gt 0 ]]; then
# kdialog --icon "arch-logo" --title "Out-Of-Date packages" --passivepopup "There are ${packages} outofdated packages (${msg1}${msg2})" 10
# notify-send -u normal -i arch-logo "Out-Of-Date packages" "There are ${packages} outofdated packages (${msg1}${msg2})"
hysbysu -u normal -i arch-logo -t 0 -s "${packages} outdated packages" -b "${enwau}"
fi
exit 0
and another at /usr/local/bin/hysbysu:
#!/bin/bash -
#set -x
export DISPLAY=:0
export XAUTHORITY=~/.Xauthority
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin
export PATH
allan=0
usage="Usage: $0 [OPTION]
Send a notification in a way which respects the KDE GUI but falls back to the standard setup (I think) if KDE isn't running.
Options:
-b --body specify message [empty]
-c --category specify category [empty]
-h --help print this message and exit
--hint specify additional hints [empty]
-i --icon specify icon [info]
-o --options options to pass to notification command [empty]
-s --summary specify summary [\"Notification\"]
-t --time specify time to expire [0 i.e. no expiry]
-u --urgency specify urgency (low, normal or critical) [normal]
For cases where the default is "empty", the default will effectively be notify-send's default since all this script does is pass stuff onto the command."
error () {
echo "$@" 1>&2
((allan++))
usage_and_exit $allan
usage () {
printf %b "$usage\n"
usage_and_exit () {
usage
exit $1
tempargs=$(getopt -o b:c:hi:o:s:t:u: --long body:,category:,help,hint:,icon:,options:,summary:,time:,urgency: -- "$@")
if [ $? != 0 ];
then
usage_and_exit
fi
eval set -- "$tempargs"
body=""
cat=""
hint=""
icon=""
summ="Notification"
time="0"
urg="normal"
while true
do
case "$1"
in
-b | --bo | --bod | --body)
body="$2"
shift;
shift;;
-c | --ca | --cat | --cate | --categ | --catego | --categor | --category)
cat="$2"
shift;
shift;;
-h | --help)
usage;
exit $allan;;
--hi | --hin | --hint)
hint="$2"
shift;
shift;;
-i | --ic | --ico | --icon)
icon="$2"
shift;
shift;;
-o | --opt | --opts| --opti | --optn | --option | --options)
options="$2"
shift;
shift;;
-s | --su | --sum | --summ | --summa | --summar | --summary)
summ="$2"
shift;
shift;;
-t | --ti | --tim | --time)
time="$2"
shift;
shift;;
-u | --ur | --urg | --urge | --urgen | --urgenc | --urgency)
urg="$2"
shift;
shift;;
shift;
break;;
error Unrecognised option "$1".
esac
done
args="$@"
if [ "$icon" = "" ]
then
if [ "$urg" = "low" ]
then
icon="dialog-information"
else
if [ "$urg" = "normal" ]
then
icon="dialog-warning"
else
if [ "$urg" = "critical" ]
then
icon="dialog-error"
else
icon="specialcharacters-Character-Question"
fi
fi
fi
fi
ksession_pid=$(ps -o pid= -C 'kwin -session' | sed 's/ //g')
if [ "$ksession_pid" = "" ]
then
dbus_session_file=~/.dbus/session-bus/$(cat /var/lib/dbus/machine-id)-0
if [ -e "$dbus_session_file" ]
then
. "$dbus_session_file"
[ $? == 0 ] || ((allan++))
export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID
else
error "Gwall! Allwn i ddim canfod $dbus_session_file."
fi
else
dbus_session_address=$(grep -z DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS /proc/$ksession_pid/environ | sed 's/^DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=//')
[ "$dbus_session_address" != "" ] || error "Could not get DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS for session."
export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="$dbus_session_address"
fi
if [ "$hint" = "" ]
then
notify-send -i "$icon" -u "$urg" -t "$time" -c "$cat" $options "$summ" "$body"
[ $? == 0 ] || ((allan++))
else
notify-send -i "$icon" -u "$urg" -t "$time" -c "$cat" -h "$hint" $options "$summ" "$body"
[ $? == 0 ] || ((allan++))
fi
#notify-send $options $args
#kdialog --passivepopup prawf-kd 0
exit $allan
As I say, I'm far from sure that's a good way to get the DBUS variable KDE's session is using. I haven't tested what happens in the absence of KDE as that's the only environment I have available.
I also installed this at /etc/cron.hourly/pacmandbcheck:
#!/bin/bash -
# ref.: http://www.andreascarpino.it/blog/posts/hey-youve-n-outofdated-packages-part-ii/
# instructions: install in /etc/cron.hourly/
# mangled by cfr
PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin
export PATH
if test -x /usr/bin/on_ac_power; then
/usr/bin/on_ac_power &> /dev/null
if test $? -eq 1; then
exit 0
fi
fi
fakedb=/dev/shm/fakepacdb
realdb=/var/lib/pacman
[[ ! -d $fakedb ]] && { mkdir -p "$fakedb/sync" || exit 1; }
[[ ! -L $fakedb/local ]] && { ln -s "$realdb/local" "$fakedb" || exit 2; }
exec fakeroot pacman --dbpath "$fakedb" -Sy
exit $?
Finally, I added this to my user crontab:
55 * * * * nice /usr/local/bin/pacmandbcheck-notifications