I would like to write a script to do an heavy network upload, in the background. However, I would like it to pause when I am using my computer (either by detecting network activity or keyboard activity or that I am not idle).
What is the best way to detect that I am using the computer, on Python on Unix?
Unixy solution using X11/XScreenSaver to get idle time:
#!/usr/bin/python
import ctypes
import os
class XScreenSaverInfo( ctypes.Structure):
""" typedef struct { ... } XScreenSaverInfo; """
_fields_ = [('window', ctypes.c_ulong), # screen saver window
('state', ctypes.c_int), # off,on,disabled
('kind', ctypes.c_int), # blanked,internal,external
('since', ctypes.c_ulong), # milliseconds
('idle', ctypes.c_ulong), # milliseconds
('event_mask', ctypes.c_ulong)] # events
xlib = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary('libX11.so')
display = xlib.XOpenDisplay(os.environ['DISPLAY'])
xss = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary('libXss.so.1')
xss.XScreenSaverAllocInfo.restype = ctypes.POINTER(XScreenSaverInfo)
xssinfo = xss.XScreenSaverAllocInfo()
xss.XScreenSaverQueryInfo(display, xlib.XDefaultRootWindow(display), xssinfo)
print "idle: %d ms" % xssinfo.contents.idle
# cleanup
xss.XCloseDisplay(display)
xss.XFree(xssinfo)
(From "X11 idle time and focused window in Python", originally found on thp.io, now apparently only the GitHub gist by the same author survives.)
A cleanup section was added to the code in a later edit by another user so that it can be called periodically.
As noted in a comment to the answer they reference, note that you should also do proper return code checking on function calls to avoid ungraceful program termination when X display and other initializations fail for some reason.