Dom0 screencapture with cron

[hoff...@gmail.com]

I would liek to set a cron job that captures a shot of my whole screen. 

I have this script in cron.hourly, but it doesn't work.

#!/bin/bash

date=$((date '+%H%M%S))

import -window root /home/user/$date.png

If I run 

$ import -window root /path/to/folder/screen.png

as a user in dom0, then it works fine.

Any suggestions? I think it has something to do with root not being able to access the full screen???

Thanks so much for any help,

Arild

[David W. Hodgins]

Try replacing the command in the cron script, which runs as root with ...
su --login user -c "import -window root /home/user/$date.png"

Regards, Dave Hodgins

[M]

May I ask why you would like to take pictures of the whole screen every hour or so... ?

For me it sounds like something that could be used for surveillance (which Qubes OS is made to prevent) if the script is imported into another Qubes OS dom0. Although it probably would require an accept from the user.

Or am I just paranoid... ?

[hoff...@gmail.com]

I'm just running through some ideas. Something every hour is a little much, but I would like to take a screenshot of the whole window after a script is run. Still the same question.

If I use su --login user -c, it prompts for a password. I'd like it to take a screenshot in the background without a need for the password.

Thanks

[tetra...@danwin1210.me]

On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 09:13:22AM -0800, hoff...@gmail.com wrote:
>I'm just running through some ideas. Something every hour is a little much,
>but I would like to take a screenshot of the whole window after a script is
>run. Still the same question.

It's not quite capturing screenshots, but here's a quick script I use to
keep track of what I'm doing at regular intervals, logging the current
time and active window name to a log file:

#!/bin/bash
TZ='UTC-0'; export TZ
LOGFILE="time.log"
INTERVAL=300 # 5 minutes
{
while :
do
date
xdotool getwindowname $(xdotool getactivewindow)
sleep $INTERVAL
done
} | tee $LOGFILE