Tips and tricks for developing scripts

General

  • Only the “Bulk Service” is required to run scripts.

  • Scripts may operate differently on different versions of the operating system or different devices

  • Scripts are only supported currently on Linux devices

  • Scripts execute as root user – so “sudo” is not needed and you can mess things up if you are not careful!

Writing scripts

  • Start with the supplied examples

  • Scripts MUST end with either “Status 1 OK” (success) or “Status 2 Failed” (failure) commands. Without one of these, tasks and jobs will never get to the "completed" state.

  • You can clear a status cell in your scripts by executing, e.g. “Status a '' “ (that is two single quotes without anything in between following the letter "a").

  • Learn how to use Linux utilities like “grep”, “awk” and “sed” to trim the information you want to display

  • Test script fragments at the console first

Debugging scripts

  • Scripts download to and execute from the /tmp folder.
  • Install and connect to a remote.it SSH service
  • Write frequently to a log file which you can review at the console
  • Send intermediate results to a status cell
  • Add the line "set -x" somewhere in your script.  If you SSH to the device, you will see debug output appear on the console when the script executes, after it hits this line.

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Job Status

  • One task (a script running on a device) which does not complete keeps the Job in the “Running” state.

  • Cancel Jobs which you suspect have not completed, then debug.

  • Canceling a Job does not “undo” the action of the script.

  • Job status can take several minutes to update, so be patient

 

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