I wrote an AppleScript to synch my Reminders (via export to JSON). It runs great... from the Script Editor. As soon as I tried to run it on the command line via osascript, I discovered it hits a wall when it tries to access reminders. After maybe a minute and a half, I get this error:
/Users/robleach/Temporary/synchRemindersTest.scpt: execution error: Reminders got an error: AppleEvent timed out. (-1712)
I also noted these errors in the console:
error 19:33:49.628309-0400 tccd Refusing client without path (from responsibility_get_responsible_audit_token_for_audit_token) PID[1422]: (#3) No such process
error 19:33:49.628370-0400 tccd Refusing TCCAccessRequest for service kTCCServiceReminders from invalid client with pid 1422
Assuming it was a permissions issue, I looked in System Preferences>Security & Privacy>Reminders, and noted that osascript is not there, nor do I have ± buttons to add it, even after authenticating.
I wondered whether saving the script as an app would prompt the Security stuff to prompt me to enable it - and that I could cron the opening of that app, but if I do that, I won't be able to pass arguments to the script (or at least, I don't know how to do that). Plus, I'd rather everything happen in the background, without a dock icon or anything (aside from the Reminders app needing to be open).
I wrote a toy example of the script that produces the timeout error:
TOY 1
tell application "Reminders"
return (properties of every reminder whose completed is false)
end tell
And I call it like this:
> osascript /Users/robleach/Temporary/synchRemindersTest.scpt
Is there a way to allow the osascript run of the script to be allowed access to the reminders? Could I like code-sign the command line executable or something? If I were to write this in another language, would it have the same issue?
I'm running Catalina 10.15.7.
UPDATE 1
I dug some more into the console. There are number of other, potentially relevant errors. I think it actually is a timeout. When I run it in Script Editor, it runs in about 40 seconds, but it times out when I run it via osascript (at maybe around a minute and a half).
However, I recalled that I have another script on a cron job that accesses reminders, and I did not remember it having an issue. So I tested it, and for whatever reason, it executes a very similar command, but succeeds. And it runs much faster in the Editor than it does on the command line from osascript. I pulled that one line out of that script that succeeds and wrapped it in a toy script:
TOY 2
tell application "Reminders"
set theList to "ToDo Home Recurring"
set namesDates to {name, due date} of (every reminder in list theList whose completed is false)
display dialog "Got " & (count of namesDates) & " reminder names & dates"
end tell
and it failed via osascript with the same timeout error. Then I pulled out another line and added it to the toy:
TOY 3
tell application "Reminders"
set theList to "ToDo Home Recurring"
show list theList
delay 0.25
set namesDates to {name, due date} of (every reminder in list theList whose completed is false)
tell application "System Events" to display dialog "Got " & (count of namesDates) & " reminder names & dates"
end tell
...it succeeds. So I don't think this is a permissions issue any longer. This feels like it maybe has to do with how efficiently osascript accesses Reminders.
I also started noticing that my first toy example above sometimes fails when run from the script editor. I kept retrying it to get the running time I pasted above and I started to sense a pattern. I think that when I select a new list to view in the Reminders GUI (it doesn't matter which one), then run the script (from the editor), it works. But if I don't select a new list to view and run the script from the editor again, it fails with that timeout.
...but that seems nuts. Can anyone explain what's going on here?
NOTE: The script I'm writing is actually an AppleScript re-write of a Siri Shortcut I wrote (that runs reliably in around 25ish seconds). Since I wanted to automate it and run it more than once a day, I decided to use AppleScript.
UPDATE 2
I tried the answer suggested by #Robert Kniazidis.
TOY 4 (modification of TOY 1)
with timeout of 3600 seconds
tell application "Reminders"
set allRems to (properties of every reminder whose completed is false)
display dialog "Got " & (count of allRems) & " reminders"
end tell
end timeout
...and kept a closer watch on the console.
Attempt 1 (TOY 4)
I ran TOY 4, starting at 7:25:24, for 10 minutes, then control-c'd it. I immediately saw numerous errors in the console. I searched the console for "Reminders" and here's what I go during the run.
Attempt 2 (TOY 4)
Then, given my insights regarding my annecdotal successes when I click a list name in the Reminders GUI, I tried clicking on a random list and ran TOY 4 again immediately after. I started TOY 4 at 7:38:23. At 7:44:22, it succeeded! That's about 6 minutes!
The console had many fewer messages in it, none of them marked as error. For comparison's sake, here are the console results from searching for "Reminders".
Discussion
I have revised my theory about what's happening. Given the console messages, I infer that when you run by osascript from the command line, the script is identified as "indirect access", and as such, is subject to a higher level of security-scrutiny, thus is takes much longer to execute. Perhaps when I "click in the GUI" (or even via AppleScript, show list theList), the security concern is still considered "indirect", but is not totally unknown to the user because the GUI is changing, so is subject to somewhat less scrutiny, and thus takes 6 minutes as opposed to somewhere over 10 minutes.
If that's true, it is interesting to note that that lesser level of scrutiny is applied even if the Reminders GUI is on a different desktop (as has been the case in my tests*).
UPDATE 3
I tried ad-hoc code-signing this morning with:
codesign --force -v -s - synchRemindersTest.app/Contents/Info.plist synchRemindersTest.app/Contents/PkgInfo synchRemindersTest.app/Contents/Resources/applet.rsrc synchRemindersTest.app/Contents/Resources/Scripts/main.scpt synchRemindersTest.app/Contents/Resources/applet.icns
...and ran the app again, which was a version of TOY 1. Still got the timeout error. I was hoping it would take 40s, like when run from the script editor. When I get time, I'll try it again but manually select a list in the Reminders GUI.
UPDATE 4
I ran the same toy as in update 3 again just now. For the 2 minutes it ran before the timeout, the console was filled with 52,349 lines of mostly this, repeating over and over, which is only the portion of that timespan that matched the search term tccd.
I also have noted that the same unmodified script, run at different times, will succeed in some runs and fail on others. Such as:
TOY 5 (synchRemindersTest5.scpt)
with timeout of 600 seconds
tell application "Reminders"
show list "ToDo Home"
set startt to (get current date)
set allRems to (properties of every reminder whose completed is false)
set endt to (get current date)
set dur to (endt - startt)
set msg to "Got " & (count of allRems) & " reminders in " & dur & " seconds"
tell application "System Events" to display dialog msg giving up after 5
return msg
end tell
end timeout
I ran it repeatedly yesterday, successfully, but I get the timeout when I run it today:
[Jun 08 22:59:51]:~/GoogleDrive/Scripts>osascript synchRemindersTest5.scpt
Got 166 reminders in 287 seconds
[Jun 08 23:06:17]:~/GoogleDrive/Scripts>osascript synchRemindersTest5.scpt
Got 166 reminders in 291 seconds
[Jun 08 23:11:45]:~/GoogleDrive/Scripts>osascript synchRemindersTest5.scpt
Got 166 reminders in 293 seconds
[Jun 08 23:17:46]:~/GoogleDrive/Scripts>osascript synchRemindersTest5.scpt
Got 166 reminders in 300 seconds
[Jun 09 8:23:28]:~/GoogleDrive/Scripts>osascript synchRemindersTest5.scpt
synchRemindersTest5.scpt: execution error: Reminders got an error: AppleEvent timed out. (-1712)
Footnotes
* I've been testing my scripts intentionally with the Reminders app on a different desktop because I have noted in my efforts that GUI scripting is always faster than accessing via the Reminders dictionary. So I wrote 2 methods: GUI and Reminders Dict. The GUI one will run if the open Reminders app is on the desktop (which I keep tucked under the dock). If we're watching Netflix full screen, I have a try/catch to use the slower Reminders Dict access method when the GUI is, as in that case, on a different desktop.
Wrap your script with timeout of 3600 seconds (1 hour). Your script time outs with default time = 2 minutes (120 seconds) per command. So,:
with timeout of 3600 seconds -- or 600 seconds, or as you want
tell application "Reminders"
return (properties of every reminder whose completed is false)
end tell
end timeout
Seing your TOY 4 once again. Man page of osascript says: Any arguments following the script will be passed as a list of strings to
the direct parameter of the ``run'' handler. So, your TOY 4 should be like this:
on run argv -- THIS
with timeout of 3600 seconds
tell application "Reminders"
set allRems to (properties of every reminder whose completed is false)
display dialog "Got " & (count of allRems) & " reminders"
end tell
end timeout
end run -- and THIS
I tried this script in the Terminal, using following command, and it successfully asked for access to Reminders, and worked after access granting. Note quotes as well:
osascript '/Users/123/Desktop/synchRemindersTest.scpt' 'output.json' 'Reminders' 'ToDo'
I did not figure out exactly what was causing the issues, but I repeatedly tried the same exact code with varying results/behaviors, apparently depending on various circumstances. Here are my observations.
Using any of the toy examples, there were 2 running behaviors that seemed to change:
runtime (fastest I could get was near half a minute, but the same code could take over 10 minutes in certain cases - I control-c'd them, so I don't know how long they'd have run)
tccd and other errors in the console (having to do with Apple's mechanism for "transparency, consent, & control" - i.e. the thing that makes those access request popups happen)
I tried running the toy examples above in the following ways:
From Script Editor
Via osascript from the command line
Rewritten as Javascript for Automation (aka "JXA") (from script editor)
As an app, double-clicked
As an app opened from the command line
And I ran those various methods under the following various circumstances (where possible):
Immediately after unlocking the screen
With the Reminders App open on the current desktop
With the Reminders App open off the current desktop
Without manually interacting with the Reminders GUI prior to running
With manually interacting with the Reminders GUI prior to running
With including an applescript instruction to show a list in the Reminders GUI
Without including an applescript instruction to show a list in the Reminders GUI
And there's one other important factor to take into account:
Reminders database size
Apple doesn't actually ever delete anything from the reminders database. I currently have 9,604 completed reminders and 193 incomplete reminders. While exploring this issue, I discovered reminders over a decade old in my reminders database.
I suspect that the issues have more to do with the size of the database than the tccd errors, as I found threads on the Apple Developers forum that describe those errors as mere log noise. I also found posts by developers who note that the ever growing size of the reminders database leads to growing performance issues, and noted that there's no way to really delete entries. Deleted entries are simply labeled as deleted.
I have found that there is no reliable running context that runs both fast and without errors under every circumstance (when you have a large Reminders database). All the ways of executing fail under certain circumstances. Some cases run faster than others, but none ever run in what I would consider a reasonable running time.
I tried code-signing an app version of the toy scripts, explicitly granting entitlements to the reminders data, but according to an app called Taccy, while I could retrieve those entitlements from the files to which they were applied, they did not prevent the tccd errors or make any of the cases run faster. I even tried code-signing a copy of the osascript executable, but apparently it only works for app bundles.
While I could see a difference in runtime under certain circumstances and could avoid tccd errors by doing things in a certain way in some circumstances (all seemingly requiring true manual actions), the runtimes were never significantly improved and errors/failures seemed unavoidable in cases where for example, the screen was locked.
So I concluded that given the size of my reminders database and the fact that I wanted to run this script with the screen locked (e.g. on a cron job), I had to abandon an AppleScript solution. It's impossible to do it predictably & reliably. (I had briefly explored a Siri Automation on an iOS device, but discovered the hoops to jump through to get it to run more than once a day were too annoying.)
So remembering that reminders were(/used to be) stored as ics files in the Library folder. I learned that with the Reminders update in iOS 13 & macOS Catalina, storage of reminders had moved to an sqlite database under ~/Library/Reminders/Container_v1/Stores.
I poked around in the database last night and started to figure things out. I googled some of what I found and found a single google hit to a github repo that had already worked the difficult sqlite stuff out. I ended up with a shell script that reliably retrieves all reminder data (nearly 10k records) in about 1 second!
I have yet to refine it to convert it to JSON and to additionally retrieve anything modified after a certain date, but what I have so far is sufficient to answer this question.
I wrote the shell script in the (unpopular) shell language of tcsh. Feel free to rewrite it in bash or start from the repo I found, which already is in bash (but doesn't retrieve all reminders data):
set REMINDERS_STORES="$HOME/Library/Reminders/Container_v1/Stores";
set SQL_GET_Z_ENT="SELECT Z_ENT FROM Z_PRIMARYKEY WHERE Z_NAME = 'REMCDList'";
foreach DBFILE ( "$REMINDERS_STORES"/Data-*-*.sqlite )
set DB="file:${DBFILE}?mode=ro"
set COUNT=`sqlite3 "$DB" "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM ZREMCDOBJECT WHERE Z_ENT = ($SQL_GET_Z_ENT) AND ZCKIDENTIFIER IS NOT NULL;"`
if ( "$COUNT" > 0 ) then
set REMINDERS_DB="$DB"
endif
end
set Z_ENT_LISTS=`sqlite3 "$REMINDERS_DB" "$SQL_GET_Z_ENT;"`
set YEARZERO=`date -j -f "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z" "2001-01-01 0:0:0 +0000" "+%s"`
set NOW=`date "+%s"`
sqlite3 "$REMINDERS_DB" "SELECT strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S',($YEARZERO + TASK.ZDUEDATE),'unixepoch') as dueDate, TASK.ZPRIORITY AS priority, TASK.ZTITLE1 AS title, LIST.ZNAME1 AS list, TASK.ZNOTES AS notes, TASK.ZCOMPLETED as completed, strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S',($YEARZERO + TASK.ZCOMPLETIONDATE),'unixepoch') as completionDate, strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S',($YEARZERO + TASK.ZCREATIONDATE),'unixepoch') as creationDate, TASK.ZDISPLAYDATEISALLDAY as isAllday, strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S',($YEARZERO + TASK.ZDISPLAYDATEDATE),'unixepoch') as alldayDate, strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S',($YEARZERO + TASK.ZLASTMODIFIEDDATE),'unixepoch') as modificationDate, TASK.ZFLAGGED as flagged FROM ZREMCDOBJECT TASK LEFT JOIN ZREMCDOBJECT LIST on TASK.ZLIST = LIST.Z_PK WHERE LIST.Z_ENT = $Z_ENT_LISTS AND LIST.ZMARKEDFORDELETION = 0 AND TASK.ZMARKEDFORDELETION = 0 ORDER BY CASE WHEN TASK.ZDUEDATE IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END, TASK.ZDUEDATE, TASK.ZPRIORITY;"
Here is an example of the output:
2011-11-01T18:30:00|0|Pay the rent|ToDo Home Recurring||1|2011-11-03T13:21:00|2017-09-18T16:59:00|0|2011-11-01T22:30:00|2020-01-04T20:40:00|0
2011-11-05T15:45:00|0|Feed meter|Reminders||1|2011-11-06T15:39:00|2017-09-18T16:59:00|0|2011-11-05T19:45:00|2020-01-04T20:36:00|0
Note, to get the dates in your time zone, as opposed to GMT(/UTC?), append 'localtime', e.g.:
strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S',($YEARZERO + TASK.ZDUEDATE),'unixepoch', 'localtime')
My Oracle DBA have setup a task with following repeat_interval:
Start Date :"30/JAN/20 08:00AM"
Repeat_interval: "FREQ=DAILY; INTERVAL=0; BYMINUTE=15"
Can I ask what is "Interval=0" means?
Does it means this task will run daily from 8AM, and will repeat every 15 mins until success?
I tried to get the answer from Google, but what I find is what is Interval=1, but nothing for 0.
So would be great if anyone can share me some light here.
Thanks in advance!
INTERVAL is the number of increments of the FREQ value between executions. I believe in this case that a value of 0 or 1 would be the same. The schedule as shown would execute once per day (FREQ=DAILY), at approximately 15 minutes past a random hour (BYMINUTE=15, but BYHOUR and BYSECOND are not set).
Schedule has nothing to do with whether or not the previous execution succeeded or not. Start Date is only the date at which the job was enabled, not when it actually starts processing.
If you want it to run every 15 minutes from the moment you enable it, you should set as follows:
FREQ=MINUTELY; INTERVAL=15
If you want it to run exactly on the quarter hour, then this:
FREQ=MINUTELY; BYMINUTE=0,15,30,45; BYSECOND=0
If you want it to run every day at 8am, then this:
FREQ=DAILY; BYHOUR=8; BYMINUTE=0; BYSECOND=0
I want to automate the endurance testing using jmeter. I have a test plan consisting of 2 thread groups, in turn having multiple requests.
I want to run the test plan first for 10 users, then for 50, then for 100...so on with each run having a pause of 20 minutes, in an automatic manner so that i do not have to sit and wait for 20 minutes and then type 50 users in the command line argument and again wait for 20 minutes and then type 100 users in the command line argument and again wait for 20 minutes and so on.
What you are asking is possible using Ultimate threadgroup,
Sample should be like,
I have added steps for 10, 50, 100 users for 20 min. If needed more runs you can add more rows with customized settings.
I figured it out. I can have an excel file which has a column containing the thread count like: 10,20,30 etc. Then in a java program using eclipse/intellij, I can read the above values from the excel file in a loop and assign the values to a String variable: "value" inside the loop. Then inside the loop,I can invoke the jmx file as below:
Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
Process pr = rt.exec("C:\\apache-jmeter-2.13\\bin\\jmeter.bat -t \"C:\\jmeter scripts\\test.jmx\" -Jusers="+value+" -n -l \"C:\\jmeter scripts\\nonGUI.csv\" -j \"C:\\jmeter scripts\\jmeterLogs.log\"");Thread.sleep(120000);
Hope this helps others who want to perform Endurance testing using jmeter+java
I have windows 2008 task scheduler I set up a PHP script to run like this
C:\php\php.exe -f etc...
In windows task scheduler I can only schedule daily or hourly how can I configure it to run every 4 hours?
In Windows Server 2008/2008R2 you can set task to repeat every number of hours you want, corresponding drop down menu just present you with 1 hour option to select, but you can type in any number of hours you need (see screenshot below).
You could just set it up to run every hour, and at the beginning of the PHP script, check the current time, and exit if the current hour modulus 4 wasn't zero.
Where it says "repeat task every", you may also just be able to change "1 hour" to "4 hours" (it's not in the dropdown, so just type it in). You can do this in Windows 7, I'm not sure about Windows Server 2008.
I have two VBScripts. ScriptA calls ScriptB using the command below
C:\Windows\System32\wscript.exe"" //Nologo //B ""C:\Program Files\ROC\ScriptB.vbs
From the ScriptA log file I can see at every run there is a delay of 5 seconds in starting ScriptB. Both scripts runs on Windows XP.
Is this a default behaviour? how can I change this?
Windows XP won't add a delay to the start of the second script. There may be a delay if the system is under extremely heavy load, but doubtful with just a vbscript.
The best way to determine where your delay is coming from is to search through scriptA and see if you can find any Sleep methods being used. Sleep takes in an argument that tells it to pause for that many milliseconds, so you would pause for 5 seconds if you had a Sleep(5000) statement somewhere in your code.
If sleep is not being called, then most likely scriptA is just finishing up some code that doesn't log out to the log file before scriptB gets kicked off. If you want to determine the exact point of the delay, start at the point in scriptA where you call scriptB and add a two log statements that will print out the time to the log file. Slowly move the first log statement upwards away from the point where scriptB is called and you will be able to determine which code is taking 5 seconds to process before scriptB is started.