Version française disponible

I have two Western Digital external hard drives: a Passport and a My Book model. I don’t want to do any advertisement here, but the following tip has been adapted to these models.

Thus, you will need to slightly modify the scripts for your own hard drive.

Hard drives are fully recognized by Ubuntu (mounting & unmounting). But, when I unmount one of them, disk is still in activity (spinning). And, when I disconnect my drive, I heard a clicking sound related to an aggressive head parking.

On the long run, these hard shutdowns will ultimately reduce the longevity of the hard disk.

This issue does not appear with Windows XP. In Windows, when using the “safely remove hardware”, the disk stops spinning, even though the drive keeps getting electricity from the USB cable, as a light on the drive stays on.

To remedy this problem with Ubuntu, here is the script to unmount and spin-down the hard drive. Please take note that scripts are differents depending on the kind of power supply.

If your device is powered by an external power adapter

(WD My Book model)

#!/bin/bash

WD=/dev/sdc1
# unmount
gksudo "umount $WD"
# spin down
gksudo "hdparm -Y $WD"
# message
echo message:Your WD My Book hard drive can be safely removed now. | zenity --notification --listen --window-icon="info" | zenity --notification --window-icon="info" --text="Your WD My Book hard drive can be safely removed now."

“/dev/sdc1” is the mount point of your drive.

Line 9 is not necessary. It uses the notification system to notify the user he can safely unplug the device.

Notification

To help you, the following is the command showing all the assigned mount points. Watch before and after plugging your hard drive. Thus, you will see easily which mount point is used by your device.

sudo fdisk -l

Fdisk - before plug in

Fdisk - after plug in

If your device is powered by the USB port itself

(WD Passport model)

#!/bin/bash

cd /sys/bus/usb/devices
good_usb=$(grep -H Western usb?/?-?/manufacturer | cut -d"/" -f1,2)
cd ${good_usb}/power
gksudo "sh -c 'echo "suspend" > level'"
echo message:Your WD Passport hard drive can be safely removed now. | zenity --notification --listen --window-icon="info" | zenity --notification --window-icon="info" --text="Your WD Passport hard drive can be safely removed now."

I have created one launcher (shortcut) for each script in the gnome panel. That’s very user-friendly with these icons.

Launchers

As a precaution, during the execution, you will be asked for your root password (sudo).

Last resort Tip

One last thing, in case the device still seems to be spinning even after the script tells you it’s safe to unplug. It is really a “system D” tip. Sometimes, I continue to use this solution when Windows stubbornly refuses to eject my WD Passport (50% time…)

Trick is to gradually unplug the hard drive very slowly. You can feel there are two steps: a first one where spinning stops (like at the end of the script), and a second one where hard drive is shutting down.

 Version française disponible

A few days ago, I discovered a kind of tools that enables you to test web applications.

WatiN (pronounced as what-in) is a .NET GUI automation framework.

By using WatiN and programming a little, you only need to execute a program and be able to surf the internet without having to surf! You got it? No? Let’s go for some explanations.

Why don’t you “automate” your everyday life? Things you often do when you surf the internet.

This software reproduces, word for word, the workflow you have programmed. Automated actions are various: click on a button, select a value in a list, capture a screenshot, save the page and so on.

The programming language is C#. If you are already familiar with Java programming, C# would be easy to understand.

I am not Microsoft addict and I am used to Eclipse but I have to admit that Microsoft Visual Studio is a great IDE. After 2 or 3 days, you get used to it and create good automation scenarios.

Technically, to “find” these buttons, lists and other HTML elements, WatiN navigates in the HTML DOM tree structure of web pages (in other words, the tags).
WatiN can interact with a lot of HTML elements (see the HTML mapping list).
WatiN identifies elements by their id, name, class, text, url, value, style… depending on your code.

To understand, the following is our first example:

public void login()
{
   // Open a new Internet Explorer Window and
   // goto a secured website
   ie = new IE('http://www.my-secured-website.com/login.php');

   // Find the user name text field and type 'toto' in it
   ie.TextField(Find.ByName('username')).TypeText('toto');

   // Find the password text field and type 'titi' in it
   ie.TextField(Find.ByName('password')).TypeText('titi');

   // Select the database
   ie.SelectList(Find.ByName('userDb')).SelectByValue('db2');

   // Click on the login button to connect
   ie.Button('loginId').Click();
}

This funtion automates the connection to a web application.

And here is the HTML code of the tested page (login.php):

<html>

<head>
</head>

<body>
    <table>
        <tr>
            <td width='100'>User Name</td>
            <td>
                <input value='' maxlength='50' name='username' type='text'>
            </td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>Password</td>
            <td>
               <input maxlength='50' name='password' type='password'>
            </td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>Database</td>
            <td>
                <select name='userDb'>
                  <option selected value='#'>Select a database</option>
                  <option value='db1'>DataBase 1</option>
                  <option value='db2'>DataBase 2</option>
                  <option value='db3'>DataBase 3</option>
                  <option value='db4'>DataBase 4</option>
                </select>
            </td>
        </tr>
        <tr height='30'><td></td></tr>
        <tr>
            <td>
                <input name='login' id='loginId' type='button' value='Login'>
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</body>

</html>

What’s happening during the execution?

WatiN opens Internet Explorer, goes to the specified URL, looks for the text field named “username” and types “toto” in it. It does the same thing for the password.
Then, it selects a database in the list named “userDb” and finally, submits the form by clicking on the button identified by “loginId”.

At this point, WatiN is going to select the database and connect the user.
WatiN colors the current element it interacts with (that’s the yellow flashing).

In this example, Internet Explorer (ie) is used but WatiN supports also Firefox.

You can use the WatiN Test Recorder tool to generate code compatible with WatiN.
Perhaps, you will need to slightly modify the generated code for some optimizations, but this is really a good starting point.

A second example: a Google search (3 lines of code needed)

// Open an new Internet Explorer Window and
// goto the google website
IE ie = new IE('http://www.google.com');
 
// Find the search text field and type 'how to use watin' in it
ie.TextField(Find.ByName('q')).TypeText('how to use watin');

// Click on the Google search button
ie.Button(Find.ByName('btnG')).Click();

Example stops here, but we can imagine a processing of the results.