Linux Terminal Scripting and Executable PHP Scripts

  • S06E53
  • September 24, 2013

Learn to write bash scripts in Linux which support multitasking asynchronous execution, and running PHP scripts from the terminal.

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Notes:
This episode marks six years of Category5 Technology TV.
This episode is sponsored in part by: Eco Alkalines.

Topics Covered:

  • Robbie Ferguson and Christa Wells present live from the Category5 studios in Barrie, Ontario.
  • {play 4:05}Our new transcoders are averaging around 5 episodes per day. We expect this to increase over the next week.
  • {play 6:45}Shout out to long-time and new viewers.
  • {play 12:32}Robbie is developing his own Content Management System, and he's having a blast writing sophisticated jQuery code.
  • {play 14:31}Feature: Introduction to scripting in the Linux terminal, with multitasking.
    • Creating a directory to work in.
    • Using nano to edit a new script in the Linux terminal.
    • Adding a shebang and specifying the interpreter of our script.
    • Making your script executable with chmod +x.
    • Grabbing some high-resolution images from demo.cat5.tv/016.
    • Writing a simple bash script which uses wget to download five images from a web server.
    • Hard-setting the download speed of wget—in our case, so we have an apples-to-apples scenario, but you might use this to prevent your script from maxing out your Internet bandwidth.
    • Specifying the output file for wget downloads.
    • Writing a very simple timer so we know how long our script takes to complete.
      start=`date '+%s'`
      # do all your stuff
      end=`date '+%s'`
      echo $(($end - $start))
    • Making our bash script asynchronous / mutlitasking, so our tasks can run simultaneously rather than having to wait for each download to complete before beginning the next.
    • Timing the results: our timer demonstrates that multitasking the same commands to download images completed in only 41% of the time—69% faster time to completion of the same task.
    • Final script from this example:
      #!/bin/bash
      start=`date '+%s'`
      wget --limit-rate=200k http://demo.cat5.tv/016/DSC_0273.JPG -O 1.jpg &
      wget --limit-rate=200k http://demo.cat5.tv/016/DSC_0343.JPG -O 2.jpg &
      wget --limit-rate=200k http://demo.cat5.tv/016/DSC_0477.JPG -O 3.jpg &
      wget --limit-rate=200k http://demo.cat5.tv/016/IMG_6290.JPG -O 4.jpg &
      
      wait
      
      mogrify -resize 640x360 *.jpg &
      
      wait
      
      end=`date '+%s'`
      
      echo $(($end - $start))
      
      echo done
    • What kind of downfalls are there to multitasking your script?
    • Adding mogrify to our script (as per Episode 310) but forcing it to wait for the downloads to complete before resizing the images.
    • Running PHP scripts on Linux from the command line.
    • Installing php5-cli, curl and php5-curl to build executable PHP code which utilizes the cURL library.
    • Break for the news
  • {play 35:32}Top Stories from the Category5.TV Newsroom
    • The iPhone 5s TouchID was hacked within days of launch.
    • HP is stocking Ubuntu-powered laptops in 1,500 of its stores in China.
    • A new home theatre chair vibrates and pulses in time with your surround sound.
    • Valve has announced SteamOS – a Linux-based Steam operating system.
  • {play 47:03}Feature (Resume): Continuing where we left off before the news.

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