[SOLVED] comand line that would simulate pressing the power button

krazyivan · 09-05-2021, 08:45 PM

Hi,
I am lazy and often fall asleep watching anime on my pc.Trying to conserve energy I'm looking for a way to put the shutdown dialog (as if I were to press the powerbutton) in crontab. Why the dialog and not just `shutdown -h now` you ask? I sometimes work/play late at night on that pc as well, so a dialog window waiting 30 sec that would not kill all my work sounds perfect.
ps. I'm a KDE user.

thanks in advance

ondoho · 09-06-2021, 01:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by krazyivan

I am lazy and often fall asleep watching anime on my pc.Trying to conserve energy I'm looking for a way to put the shutdown dialog (as if I were to press the powerbutton) in crontab. Why the dialog and not just `shutdown -h now` you ask? I sometimes work/play late at night on that pc as well, so a dialog window waiting 30 sec that would not kill all my work sounds perfect.

Doesn't compute.
If you're asleep you cannot save your work anyhow, whether the command waits 30s or not???

In any case, I think you missed one of the options that does exactly what you want, when you were reading shutdown's man page.
You did that before asking here, didn't you?

Turbocapitalist · 09-06-2021, 02:19 AM

The shutdown utility can take time, either relative or absolute.

Code:

sudo shutdown -h +5 'Done for the day'

sudo shutdown -h 23:30 'Done for the day'

Another option would be to either suspend or hibernate the system using the pm-suspend or pm-hibernate utilities. That would more or less poweroff your hardware yet let you resume where you left off once you wake the system up again.

Code:

echo pm-suspend | sudo at now +5 minutes

echo pm-suspend | sudo at 23:30

If you're careful, you could even launch your movie in such a way that the system suspends after it is finished playing.

krazyivan · 09-06-2021, 07:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ondoho

Doesn't compute.
If you're asleep you cannot save your work anyhow, whether the command waits 30s or not???

Let me rephrase that in a more understandable manner: There are nights when I fall asleep watching a show, there are also nights when I work late and I use the same PC.
That is why I'm looking for an interactive shudown command - to shutdown in the first case but ask me in the latter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turbocapitalist

The shutdown utility can take time, either relative or absolute.

Code:

sudo shutdown -h +5 'Done for the day'

sudo shutdown -h 23:30 'Done for the day'

Code:

echo pm-suspend | sudo at now +5 minutes

echo pm-suspend | sudo at 23:30

thanks, I know those commands but none of those are interactive from the X level. As mentioned - X user interaction is crucial for this use case.

boughtonp · 09-06-2021, 07:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turbocapitalist

If you're careful, you could even launch your movie in such a way that the system suspends after it is finished playing.

This would seem to be the best approach - it's both simpler and addresses the actual issue.

(The technical one at least - if one is frequently falling asleep whilst watching something, consider figuring out why that is and solving that problem.)

Turbocapitalist · 09-06-2021, 07:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by krazyivan

thanks, I know those commands but none of those are interactive from the X level. As mentioned - X user interaction is crucial for this use case.

Then put them together with some others. Here is one with xmessage but there are many alternatives to it around. The main option here is -timeout but you could even use the timeout utility from coreutils instead.

Code:

echo "DISPLAY=:0.0 xmessage -buttons Ok:0,\"Not sure\":1,Cancel:2 -default Ok -nearmouse \"Sleep ?\" -timeout 20 && sudo pm-suspend" | at now +5 minutes

Then you'd need something corresponding in /etc/sudoers

Code:

%krazyivan ALL=(root:root) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/pm-suspend ""

or something like that.

boughtonp · 09-06-2021, 08:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turbocapitalist

Then you'd need something corresponding in /etc/sudoers

I don't need to sudo with "systemctl hibernate" or "systemctl poweroff" and I don't recall configuring that.

(Using hibernate instead of shutdown would address the possibility of starting a movie with unsaved work in the background.)

krazyivan · 09-06-2021, 08:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turbocapitalist

Code:

echo "DISPLAY=:0.0 xmessage -buttons Ok:0,\"Not sure\":1,Cancel:2 -default Ok -nearmouse \"Sleep ?\" -timeout 20 && sudo pm-suspend" | at now +5 minutes

.

This was my puzzle's missing piece - I forgot that xmessage can have a timeout. It fits my usecase just perfect.
Thanks Turbocapitalist, You solved my issue!

Turbocapitalist · 09-06-2021, 08:48 AM

No problem. For what it's worth, yad and zenity also have timeout options.