Comments on: HOWTO: Track your mac

By: tompohl

tompohl — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:29:41 +0000

I know it works under Lion. The trick to using launchctl bsexec is to use the PID of loginwindow process of the interactive user.

From a ssh session try this:
ps auxww |grep loginwindow |grep -v grep |awk ‘{print $2}’

Take the output number from that command (let's say it's 100) and then run the isightcatpture command:
launchctl bsexec 100 /path/to/isightcapture image.jpg

That should trigger the camera and save an image.jpg file in your current directory.

By: t0hvanah

t0hvanah — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:09:20 +0000

I'm unable to run isightcapture remotely in Lion. I've tried a number of variations with launchctl bsexec, applescript, etc.

Any suggestions?

By: tompohl

tompohl — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 11:19:13 +0000

The php script wouldn't do much since latest.jpg doesn't exist
Here, add a second line under the curl line I suggested earlier:
curl -T /.locateme/images/taken/$datetime.jpg -u $USER:$PASS $BASEURL/latest.jpg

By: JoSer

JoSer — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 23:33:34 +0000

thanks for that. The FTP Upload works, but the php script is doing nothing. Now I used another simple php script gallery that displays the pics.

By: tompohl

tompohl — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:04:55 +0000

doing an ftp upload via curl would be an easy modification to the go.sh script:

Change:
/usr/bin/curl -u $USER:$PASS -F uploadedfile=@/.locateme/images/taken/$datetime.jpg $BASEURL/

to:
curl -T /.locateme/images/taken/$datetime.jpg -u $USER:$PASS $BASEURL

And also change $BASEURL in locateme.conf to something like ftp://mywebhost.com/uploaddir/

The only thing that you'll miss out on is where the php script symlinks the latest image to latest.jpg, but it would at least get the file out to the server!

By: JoSer

JoSer — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:53:27 +0000

yep =)
Sorry, i've missed that part about unzipping via command line. The script works now.
I'm now wondering if there is a solution within the script to use a hosted webspace.
I can't edit the apache config on that hoseted webspace.
So I tried .htaccess, but that didnt' work.
Then I thought about using curl to upload via ftp, but then there's the POST data missing.
Is there a possibility for hosted webspaces?

By: tompohl

tompohl — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:29:55 +0000

It is in the directory named .locateme (with the '.' on the front). Files/folders in unix/osx that start with a '.' are hidden so they won't show up in Finder, but they are there. If you follow the step-by-step instructions, it should work!

By: JoSer

JoSer — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:35:52 +0000

Am I wrong, or is the locateme script missing in the tar file?

By: Adam Whitney

Adam Whitney — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:43:23 +0000

Tom, thanks for the sweet writeup. It works great!

I did find one typo in the index.php file of the root 'locateme' directory. Line 21 should read "Content-type" instead of "Contet-type". Once I fixed that, the latest snapshot loaded just fine in my browser.

By: tompohl

tompohl — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:03:38 +0000

Great catch! I've updated the tgz file so anyone else who downloads it will benefit from your find!