[browsershots-factories] Perfect Windows Setup

[Sam Bryan]

Greetings also :)

> And I've recently written a watchdog to start shotfactory processes
> automatically on Linux:
> http://svn.browsershots.org/trunk/scripts/shotfactory_watchdog.sh

That is a very cool and handy script, thanks for that Johann.  

Running the crontab lines with a password means that the password is
visible in the process list and is frequently written to the syslog, so
may I suggest a simple password file option to shotfactory.py, eg:

shotfactory.py --password_file=</path/to/password_file>

Where password_file contains the plaintext password.


It'd help keep the paranoid admins (i.e. me) a little more relaxed ;)


Cheers!

Sam


On Tue, 2007-12-25 at 00:59 +0100, Johann C. Rocholl wrote:
> Greetings of the season :-)
> 
> On Dec 24, 2007 9:44 PM, Times Enemy wrote:
> > I have a spare XP Pro license, which i have tried to use within a virtual
> > computer solely for BrowserShots.  However, it seems that i can only peek at
> > 1300 or so uploads per day.  What can i do to lift this figure?
> 
> If your internet connection is fast, you can try to reduce the page
> load wait time. The default is 30 seconds, but you can adjust it like
> this:
> shotfactory.exe --wait 20
> 
> (Try "shotfactory.exe --help" for a full list of available options.)
> 
> I'm also working on an option to reuse the browser window for several
> screenshot requests, rather than restarting the browser for each
> website, at least for some browsers (e.g. Firefox). Stay tuned!
> 
> > Also, i can probably run another virtual computer with Debian or such.  What
> > are some tried and true methods for running BrowserShots?
> 
> Please see the following pages in the wiki:
> http://trac.browsershots.org/wiki/InstallFactoryLinux
> http://trac.browsershots.org/wiki/InstallFactory#Troubleshooting
> http://trac.browsershots.org/wiki/SeparateShotFactoryUser
> 
> I usually set up several user accounts: shotfactory1, shotfactory2,
> ..., shotfactory6. Then I run up to 6 screenshot factories
> simultaneously on one Linux machine, using the --display option to
> give each factory a different VNC server display (:1 through :6).
> 
> I recommend the "screen" command for unattended operation on Linux.
> You can start the shotfactory on the console, then log out, later log
> in and connect to the screen again (the -L option creates a file
> called screenlog.0 with the full output, which is helpful when it
> crashes):
> 
> screen -L python shotfactory.py --display :2 --password ...
> Ctrl-A Ctrl-D # disconnect from screen, but keep running
> logout
> 
> ssh shotfactory # log in again
> screen -rd # connect to screen again
> 
> You can use xvncviewer (or any VNC client) to look at the virtual
> screens of your screenshot factories, even remotely if necessary:
> xvncviewer shotfactory:2
> 
> And I've recently written a watchdog to start shotfactory processes
> automatically on Linux:
> http://svn.browsershots.org/trunk/scripts/shotfactory_watchdog.sh
> 
> Some of the information in this email should probably be added to the
> wiki too, but I haven't gotten around to that yet.
> 
> Cheers,
> Johann
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