Screenshotting the windows desktop when working through WSL - python

I'm primarily using Windows, where I run WSL2. So from a python script running in the subsystem, I would like to screenshot whatever is on windows monitor, as simple as such:
v1
import mss
import os
os.environ['DISPLAY'] = ':0'
with mss.mss() as sct:
sct.shot()
This gives only gives "Segmentation fault" error and no image. So I tried to setup vcxsrv in Windows and I'm able to open stuff from my subsystem in Windows through the server, however I cant get it the other way around..
I just want access to the windows screen so I can screenshot it. Any help about how to access the monitor through wsl would be greatly appreciated, I can't find much on google..

The problem with your attempted solution is that the WSL/Linux Python's mss, as you've found, isn't able to capture the Windows desktop. Being the Linux version of MSS, it will only be able to communicate with Linux processes and protocols like X. Starting up VcXsrv might get you part of the way there, in that you might be able to capture X output, but you may need to be running the Python app from inside a terminal that is running in a X window.
Regardless, you've said that your goal is to capture the entire Windows desktop, not just the X output in VcXsrv. To do that, you'll need to use a Windows process of some sort.
But don't worry; using WSL's interop, you can still do that from inside WSL/Linux Python. We just need to call out to a Windows .exe of some sort.
There are literally dozens of third-party apps that you could use in Windows to create a screenshot. But I prefer to use a solution that doesn't require any additional installation.
So I resorted to PowerShell for this, since you can easily call powershell.exe and pass in a script from WSL. There are a number of examples here on Stack Overflow, but I ended up going slightly "lower tech" to try to simplify a bit. The code here is most similar to this solution, so refer to that if you want to expand on this.
From WSL/Linux Python:
import os
os.system("""
powershell.exe \"
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms
[Windows.Forms.Sendkeys]::SendWait('+{Prtsc}')
\$img = [Windows.Forms.Clipboard]::GetImage()
\$img.Save(\\\"\$env:USERPROFILE\\Pictures\\Screenshots\\screenshot.jpg\\\", [Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat]::Jpeg)\"
""")
That essentially sends the ShiftPrintScreen key chord to capture the current desktop to the clipboard, then saves the clipboard. It can get slightly hairy with the quoting, since you are essentially wrapping PowerShell inside a /bin/sh inside a Python script.
Note that, even though you are in Linux Python, since it's the Windows PowerShell that we are calling, it takes the Windows path format (C:\Users\Username\Pictures...) rather than the Linux version (/mnt/c/Users/...).
While I didn't have any timing issues with this, you may need to insert small delays. Again, refer to the existing answer for that. This solution is primarily to explain how to do it through WSL's Python using PowerShell.

if you are on a laptop you could hit the windows button and prtsc to take a screenshot and if you are on PC you could use OBS its recording software that can do pretty much anything.

Related

How do I reload installed fonts in OS X using Python?

I'm working on a project with wxPython, which includes a non-standard font. On Windows there's no problem, as I can just use wx.AddPrivateFont, however, macOS (OS X) does not support this, and the font has to be already installed. I've found that this can be done by placing the file in the users Fonts directory like this: (I'm of course making sure that this will only run under OS X)
user_font_directory = f"/Users/{getpass.getuser()}/Library/Fonts"
shutil.copyfile(path, f"{user_font_directory}/{file_name}")
This actually works, and any program that runs after this, is able to use the font. However, the program that installed it is itself not able to use it before it is restarted manually, as there seems to be some sort of font cache that is only given to a process right when it's launched. To get around this i firstly tried just reinitializing the wx.App, but this made no difference. I then tried making Python restart itself using this method:
def restart_program():
python = sys.executable
os.execl(python, python, *sys.argv)
But still to no avail. I then tried separating the installation itself into another script, which after completion launched the main script as a sub process:
subprocess.run([sys.executable, "main.py"])
This had no effect.
So is there a way to make Python programmatically reload the font cache from OS X (or is there a better solution altogether)?

Use Intel Pin to instrument Python scripts

I need to instrument a Python script using Intel Pin for ChampSim simulator.
The problem is, whenever I run the tool, the script does not seem to run as nothing is printed. Moreover, no matter how long/complex the script is, the trace always ends up with a size of 62M (this is also the case when I simply instrument the interpreter without any script).
I tried running the solution from this post, but it didn't work either. For reference, I am running the following command:
../../../pin -t obj-intel64/champsim_tracer.so -- ./python_script.py
Is it even possible to instrument a Python script? If yes, please detail the steps. Thanks!

Run Python script quickly via HotKey

I've created a simple script that executes a "moving mouse and keyboard" sequence. Although currently to get this to work I use a Shell (Idle) to run and that is to slow with boot up time and such.
Is there a way to have this python file on desktop och with a hotkey swiftly run the code? I tried doing it through terminal but it doesn't like my module.
Some info:
This is for both mac and windows.
The module I imported is pyautogui from PyPi and it works in the shell.
Thank you in advance!
Some things to consider when trying to setup a hotkey to successfully execute any kind of command:
Each Operating System has its own ways to setup hotkeys and sometimes this may differ between distributions as well as between desktop managers.
Many of the relevant how-to-descriptions are easily found via regular search machines as Google.
If you would in fact like your script to set-up its own hotkeys you would have to re-write it in such a manner that it can detect the current operating system/distribution/desktop manager by itself and execute the commands relevant to that particular set-up.

Python interacting with OS X - is it possible?

I'll explain my question: is it possible to write a Python script which interacts with OS X architecture in a high-level way?
For example, can I gain control on Mac OS X windows resizing from a Python script? Are there modules for that? I'm not finding any.
To push things even further, would I be able to control keyboard shortcuts too? I mean, with Python, could I write a script that opens a terminal window everytime I type cmd + Enter from wherever I am in that moment, as if it was a system shortcut (Awesome WM style, if you know what I'm talking about)?
Hope I've been clear.
The 2nd one you can't do for sure, since the events are grabbed by other processes.
You should look for a osx specific library for doing that and then write a python wrapper around it.

Python IDE on Linux Console

This may sound strange, but I need a better way to build python scripts than opening a file with nano/vi, change something, quit the editor, and type in python script.py, over and over again.
I need to build the script on a webserver without any gui. Any ideas how can I improve my workflow?
put this line in your .vimrc file:
:map <F2> :w\|!python %<CR>
now hitting <F2> will save and run your python script
You should give the screen utility a look. While it's not an IDE it is some kind of window manager on the terminal -- i.e. you can have multiple windows and switch between them, which makes especially tasks like this much easier.
You can execute shell commands from within vim.
Using emacs with python-mode you can execute the script with C-c C-c
you can try ipython. using its edit command, it will bring up your editor (nano/vim/etc), you write your script, and then on exiting you're returned to the ipython prompt and the script is automatically executed.
When working with Vim on the console, I have found that using "tabs" in Vim, instead of having multiple Vim instances suspended in the background, makes handling multiple files in Vim more efficient. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it works really well.
You could run XVNC over ssh, which is actually passably responsive for doing this sort of thing and gets you a windowing GUI. I've done this quite effectively over really asthmatic Jetstart DSL services in New Zealand (128K up/ 128K down =8^P) and it's certainly responsive enough for gvim and xterm windows. Another option would be screen, which lets you have multiple textual sessions open and switch between them.
There are actually 2 questions. First is polling for a console IDE for python and the second is a better dev/test/deploy workflow.
For while there are many ways you can write python code in the console, I find a combination of screen, vim and python/ipython is the best as they are usually available on most servers. If you are doing long sessions, I find emacs + python-mode typically involves less typing.
For a better workflow, I would suggest setting up a development environment. You can easily setup a Linux VM on your desktop/laptop easily these days - there isn't a excuse not to even if it's for hobby projects. That opens up a much larger selection of IDEs available to you, such as:
GUI versions of VI and friends
Remote file editing with tramp and testing locally with python-mode inside Emacs
http://www.netbeans.org
and of course http://eclipse.org with the PyDev plugin
I would also setup a SCM to keep track of changes so that you do
better QA and use it to deploy tested changes onto the server.
For example I use Mercurial for my pet projects and I simply tag my repo when it's ready and update the production server to the tag when I deploy. On the devbox, I do:
(hack hack hack, test test test)
hg ci -m 'comment'
hg tag
hg push
Then I jump onto the server and do the following when I deploy:
hg update
restart service/webserver as needed
Well, apart from using one of the more capable console editors (Emacs or vi would come to mind), why do you have to edit it on the web server itself? Just edit it remotely if constant FTP/WebDAV transfer would seem to cumbersome.
Emacs has Tramp Mode, gedit on Linux and bbedit on the Mac support remote editing, too. Probably quite a large number of other editors. In that case you would just edit in on a more capable desktop and restart the script from a shell window.
For what it's worth, VIM alone can do the same tasks as previously posted. I have had the same problem with testing Python from the command line.
My solution was to use the screen command. I split screens vertically, I run Python in one instance of a shell, and on the second screen, I usually edit Python code with VIM.
Command to install screen:
sudo apt-get install screen
The screen package has a bit of a learning curve but there isn't any mystery if you can remember the "Ctrl-Alt ?" command that contains all knowledge.
No GUI is required!

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