GeekTool is a utility that allows you to embed objects and information directly onto your Mac's desktop. It installs as a preference pane in the System Preferences, and from there you can open use. Your Mac runs a series of maintenance scripts on it’s own to clear out various cache and log files. To see when the scripts were last run, type the following at the command line: ls -la /var/log/.out You will then see something like this:-rw-r-r- 1 root wheel 283124 16 Jun 02:15 /var/log/daily.out. To use the scripts: Clone this git repository (or copy-paste the code into a file) Change paths that are hard-coded in the files (needed for things like images) Change certain info contained in the file (locations for weather-display) Run the scripts. Their output will tell you what to do. If you want anti-aliased fonts in GeekTool, use. Oct 14, 2016 GeekTool lets you display various kinds of information on your desktop via 3 default plug-ins. Plug-Ins: File plugin to monitor OS X activity with /var/log/system.log, or any file that you want to follow. Shell mode to launch custom scripts or commands like 'df' to check space left on filesystems or 'uptime' to monitor load on your machine. Jan 25, 2017 Collections Free geektool geektool scripts mac scripts. 25 great free resources for. Ways to Make Your Mac's Desktop Better with Geek. Tool is an amazing free app that is a bit like Dashboard for the super nerdy.
| Click here to return to the '10.6: A script to display available Apple software updates' hint |
This would be great if it also checked versions of your installed apps in Applications & ~/Applications for newer versions.
While interesting, that's certainly a complicated process to check for software updates from the command line. Type this in the Terminal to check for updates:
softwareupdate -l
Type this to install the updates (this requires admin rights):
sudo softwareupdate -i -a
Obviously there's other options if you want to gain more control over which updates are installed but that's the basics. You can even run them on a remote machine if you ssh into it first.
http://blog.kaputtendorf.de/2009/02/22/updatecheck/
It works pretty well :)
Thou shalt study thy libraries and strive not to reinvent them without cause, that thy code may be short and readable and thy days pleasant and productive.-- The Ten Commandments for C Programmers. By extension, applies to Unix utilities as well. That said, I didn't know about the command line utility either, and am glad about the comments here often bringing out such solutions.
Is it really a good idea not to run as admin? (OK, bad phrasing--it's never a bad idea. I really mean: is it a bad idea to run as admin?) Running as normal user instead of admin was certainly a good idea on pre-Vista versions of Windows--if you were an admin, you could do anything anywhere and nothing would even try to stop you (or an executable silently running as you).
However, on OS X and newer versions of Windows, you are prompted for your password (or, on Windows, at least just confirmation if you're already an admin) whenever you do anything that requires admin privileges--e.g., modifying anything in the file system besides your profile folder, changing system-wide settings (like power management or the computer's hostname), and the like. You're prompted even if your account currently is an administrator. Even from Terminal (in OS X) you have to sudo for certain commands (and in Windows you'll have to do the equivalent right-click-and-choose 'Run as Administrator,' even if you are one, when you start the command prompt, to give it that extra level of elevation).
I don't really see how it's different, other that running as a non-admin makes you think of the username, as well.
softwareupdate -l from the command line whenever you're curious? GeekTool is a great application for OS X that allows you to display the contents of shell scripts, images, and files directly on the desktop. This page provides some scripts that I have written or adapted from others I've found to provide useful information on the desktop with GeekTool.
I put all of my scripts into ~/bin/gt-scripts/ to keep them all organized and together.
- 1Scripts
The following are scripts that I use with GeekTool. They were either written by me or were found elsewhere and adapted/improved or otherwise changed to suit my needs.
IP Information
This script displays your current local and external IP addresses.
gt-ipinfo:
Mini-Calendar
This script displays the calendar for this month with the current day hashed out.
gt-cal
Uptime, CPU/RAM usage
This script displays current uptime as well as RAM and CPU usage on the system.
gt-cpustats
Disk Usage
This script shows current mounted volumes and disk usage, separating local and remote volumes:
gt-df
Weather
This script displays current weather conditions. You will need to change the p= value in the URL to your own location code or you'll see what crappy weather we currently have in Edmonton.
gt-weather:
The Hit List
I really like Potion Factory's The Hit List but only found a script written in Ruby that would let me get the information I wanted. I'm not 100% satisfied with this script so it will likely be updated in the future yet, but this two-script combo works pretty well for my needs right now. It is a combination of Python and AppleScript.. AppleScript gets the data from The Hit List and Python calls the AppleScript and does all the formatting of the output. This way I can have my upcoming list pretty much in my face all the time.
hitlist.scpt
gt-hitlist.py:
Geektool Scripts Tutorial
- 09/01/2009 - fix the gt-hitlist.py script due to output errors from 10.6
- 08/30/2009 - fix the gt-cpustats script with info for 10.6
- 08/14/2009 - initial article