Refined brightness with i3-WM and i3blocks

I'm a picky person and it decided it was high time to clean up the display for my brightness in i3blocks.


In order to control my brightness via the keyboard, I found that I needed to create a bindsym using xbacklight to reflect this in my ~/.config/i3/config. I chose to increase and decrease xbacklight by 10%.

Initial bindsym:

#Brightness controls
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec "xbacklight -inc 10 ; pkill -RTMIN+1 i3blocks"
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec "xbacklight -dec 10 ; pkill -RTMIN+1 i3blocks"

The problem I found with this is that xbacklight increases and decreases based on percentage values of the total maximum brightness for the screen, which on my system is 937. This meant that if i3blocks displayed my brightness at 100% and then I decreased it by 10%, the next value displayed was 89%. This bothered me for no other reason than I am pretty neurotic.

The other problem is that at night-time, I wanted to be able to easily set my brightness to just slightly above 0% to reduce strain on my eyes while using my laptop in total darkness. I also wanted to be able to turn my screen off using the brightness controls because my partner enjoys listening to netflix shows with the screen off while she's trying to sleep. At the settings I had initially, I could turn the screen off but once I increased the brightness, it increased to a value of 9, which is too bright for an initial value in my opinion. To solve this, I wrote two bash scripts to handle the brightness and ensure the output of multiples of ten.

To increase screen brightness:

#!/bin/bash
#Created by Brian Winkler

#This script is free to use and modify as your own

#Check out my blog at https://nuxview.blogspot.com/


STATUS="$(xbacklight -get)"
CHECK="${STATUS}"

if [[ $CHECK == 0.000000 ]]

then
 xbacklight -inc 1
 pkill -RTMIN+1 i3blocks

else
 xbacklight -inc 10
 pkill -RTMIN+1 i3blocks
fi

This script checks if the brightness value is at its lowest and if it is, increases the brightness by a value of 1. Otherwise, it increases the brightness by a value of 10.


To decrease screen brightness:

#!/bin/bash
#Created by Brian Winkler
#This script is free to use and modify as your own
#Check out my blog at https://nuxview.blogspot.com/

STATUS="$(xbacklight -get)"
CHECK="${STATUS}"

if [[ $CHECK == 100.000000 ]]

then
 xbacklight -dec 9
 pkill -RTMIN+1 i3blocks

else
 xbacklight -dec 10
 pkill -RTMIN+1 i3blocks
fi

This script checks if the brightness is all the way up and if it is, decreases it by a value of 9. Otherwise, it decreases the brightness by a value of 10.


For both of these scripts, pkill -RTMIN+1 i3blocks makes it so I can set my interval to once in the brightness display command in i3blocks.conf and then whenever I change the brightness, it automatically reloads the brightness display.


So now my i3blocks brightness block is using only multiples of ten and allows for me to turn my brightness off and when I turn it on, it first sets the brightness to the lowest possible value.

I then made these scripts executable using chmod +x and copied them to /usr/local/bin/ and named them brightinc and brightdec respectively.


My new ~/.config/i3/config looks like this:

#Brightness controls
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec brightinc
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec brightdec

These scripts as also available on my i3blocks github.


If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me or to comment here. I would love to hear from you!

Create Linux users using a C program

Today, in order to further familiarize myself with C programming, I wrote a program to automate the process of creating new users. This program is for personal use only, meaning if you are running this on a server with many users, you run the risk of something being passed to the program that can harm your system.

Here's the source code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

//Created by Brian Winkler
//Create new user

int main (void) {
        char user[128];
        char add[128];
        
        
        printf("Enter a user name:\n");
        scanf("%s", user);
        
        snprintf(add, sizeof(add), "useradd -m -G users -s /bin/bash %s", user);
        system(add);

        printf("User %s created!\n", user);
        return 0;
    
    
}

It's a very simple program but through compounding Linux commands, a very powerful program can be created. This program has been tested on Arch Linux and Ubuntu 14.04.

This source code can also be found on my github.

i3 Window Manager Configuration

As of late, I've been rather obsessed with tweaking my i3 Window Manager configuration. I'm utilizing i3blocks for the i3bar and of course, these config files are dependent on having the proper packages installed that are called in execution.

Here's a screenshot of my desktop:

Desktop

Some highlights of my configuration:

-Key bindings for the volume, brightness, play/pause buttons.

-Sshuttle VPN notifier. Sshuttle allows me to bypass my school's firewall that prevents VPN connections.

-Pastel colors for a soft and appealing desktop.

-Display of both local IP address and external IP address.

-Active window notification.

-Source Code Pro font package for improved appearance.

Notes:

-Some of the config file and scripts are tweaked versions of scripts created by others. In order to insure intellectual integrity, the proper attributions were left in the script files.

-Some blocks are on a long refresh interval to reduce system resource use. In order to keep them current, I use '$mod + Shift + r' to load them upon change.

-There is a one second lag on the brightness and volume changes but the settings for quicker updating ate up too much of my processor to be viable.

-I do not use a compositor. I tried compton but I actually noticed a performance drop. I attribute this to having an Intel video card, which is supported in the kernel.

-I am also using kupfer instead of dmenu.


If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to share them!

Also, if you too are struggling with aggressive firewalls, I am willing to offer a free user account on my digital ocean droplet for use with sshuttle for those that ask!

SSH out of network that is disabling your VPN

So school has started back up this semester and over the summer break, the IT department stepped up their game. I used to be able to run my tor-broswer and connect to my VPN and probe the hell of out the network using nmap. It seems those days are over.

But I can't accept that, so I immediately set about trying to figure out how to beat their new level of security and finally be able to torrent the newest release of Arch Linux to update my recovery USB (my school has impressively good bandwidth).

I quickly came across sshuttle, a service that allows you to redirect all of your internet traffic through ssh, which was an open port on this network that wouldn't let anything else get through. The only requirement is root access on the local machine and user access on the ssh destination.

sshuttle is available in the Arch community repository. It depends on iptables being property set up on the local machine.

In order to automate this process, I wrote two scripts. One to call sshuttle and one to kill it. I then saved these scripts to my /usr/bin directory in order to call these commands anywhere in my system.

Here's the script to start sshuttle:

#!/bin/bash
##Written by Brian Winkler
##Liscensed under the GPL
##Check out my blog at https://nuxview.blogspot.com/
##COntact me at <brianewinkler@gmail.com>


##Run sshuttle

##Replace [user@host] with your ssh login credentials
sshuttle -D -r [user@host] 0/0

And here's the script to kill the tunnel:

#!/bin/bash
##Wrttten by Brian Winkler
##Licensed unde the GPL
##Check out my blog at https://nuxview.blogspot.com/
##Contact me at <brianewinkler@gmail.com>


##Get process id
PROCESS=$(pgrep sshuttle)

##Store PID in kill command
##Not the most elegent solution but it gets the work done
KILL_PROCESS=$(kill -9 $PROCESS)

##Execute kill command
echo $KILL_PROCESS

Once sshuttle is running, I am fianlly able to connect my VPN and ensure the anonymity of my internet traffic whilst in public.


Both of these scripts are available on my github page. Hopefully, if you're having issues using a VPN on a public network, these work for you!

Please feel free to post any questions or comments!

i3Blocks PPTP Status Indicator

Here is yet another bash script for i3Blocks in the i3 Window Manager. This one is very similar to the VPN Status Indicator I posted previously except this applies to PPTP tunnels.

Read more about i3Blocks here and read my review of the 3 Window Manager here.

Here's the script:

#!/bin/bash
#Created by Brian Winkler
#Licensed under the GPL
#See more scripts at https://github.com/BrighBrigh/i3Blocks
#And check out my Linux blog at https://nuxview.blogspot.com/


##Check PPTP status
##Edit this file to show a unique output for when you have PPTP tunneling turned on
##Change "ppp0" in both places to fit your needs
GET_PPTP=$(ip addr show | grep pp0 | cut -d ' ' -f2 | cut -d ':' -f1)

##Store status in STATUS
if [[ $GET_PPTP == *"ppp0"* ]]
then   
    STATUS=ON
else
    STATUS=OFF
fi


#Print status
echo $STATUS
echo $STATUS



##Colors
if [[ "$STATUS" == "ON" ]]
then
    echo "#00ff00"
else
    echo "#ff0000"
fi

And once again, this script it available on my i3Blocks github page.

Please feel free to post any questions or comments!

i3Blocks Show External IP Address

To continue my series about tinkering with i3Blocks, I created a script that utilizes wget to return my external (or public) IP address and display it in the status bar. Read more about the i3 Window Manager here.

It's a very simple script that uses an external server to identify the IP address and prints it to that status bar.

#!/bin/bash

IP=$(wget http://ipinfo.io/ip -qO -)
echo $IP

I will be keeping a complete collection of my scripts on my github.

Please feel free to comment or to ask questions!

i3Blocks VPN Status Notifier

I wrote a bash script to handle the status of my VPN. When disconnected, it displays "OFF" in red text and when connected, it displays "ON" in green.

Here's the script if you want to use it or modify it to fit your system!

#!/bin/bash



##Check VPN status
GET_VPN=$(nmcli con show | grep tun0 | cut -d ' ' -f1)

##Store status in STATUS
if [[ $GET_VPN == *"tun0"* ]]
then   
    STATUS=ON
else
    STATUS=OFF
fi



echo $STATUS
echo $STATUS



##Colors
if [[ "$STATUS" == "ON" ]]
then
    echo "#00ff00"
else
    echo "#ff0000"
fi

i3Blocks for the i3WM

I've recently removed GNOME entirely and am using the i3 Window Manager as my daily driver with pleasing results. You can read my review of the i3 Window Manager here.

Through utilizing the i3blocks-git package in the AUR, I've been able to achieve a level of customization for the i3 bar that I'm finding very satisfying.

I'm using both the default i3 blocks scripts along with Anachron's scripts and some personalized ones. Anachron's scripts provided me with the ability to increase and decrease my volume by clicking on the icon, increase and decrease my brightness by clicking on the icon, etc. Check out Anacron's scripts for some well written scripts to improve the already great i3 blocks!

Scripts can be added to /usr/lib/i3blocks/ and made executable using chmod +x. Then, these scripts can be called by adding them to the ~/.i3blocks.conf text file.

Please feel free to share your own i3 blocks set-up here!