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Mixx · 07-14-2012, 01:29 PM

OK, just to close the thread, a couple of remarks.

I have succeeded to configure an old laptop running Ubuntu with just 3 scripts to do the following:

The laptop wakes up every morning at 6pm from hibernation and downloads a daily load of a number of recipes. Saturday mornings it additionally downloads more stuff for the weekend. After fetching and mailing the news feeds to my Kindle account at amazon is complete, the laptop hibernates to disk again (thereby consuming very little electric power).

This is what I wanted to accomplish and it seems to work now. I am a happy camper.

Anybody trying to do something similar should note that

Old laptops might not be able to run the latest Ubuntu version, as starting with 12.04 there are kernel issues for old HW. The latest version of Calibre runs well on 10.04, thus this is not a big problem.
Even if the rtcwake command (see first post in this thread) is working well, there are issues with waking up, the Ubuntu boot manager GRUB has sometimes problems (waits for user interaction). These can be fixed by configuring its scripts (/etc/grub.d/00_header with a timeout) and disabling legacy USB support in BIOS.
rtcwake can go to deep sleep (S4) using a disk image, in which case it survives short power outages well. I use this mode (rtcwake -m disk...).
rtcwake requires root privileges, which can be invoked by "sudo rtcwake..." in the script. By editing a config file via "visudo", one can specifiy that the user is permitted to run "sudo rtcwake" without having to enter the password (needed for the script).
All of the above is documented in the newsgroups. I have minimal skills and could manage.
I decided to put the recipes I like into two folders on Dropbox. That way I can manage them (selection, update, config, etc.) from my main PC. My scripts cycle through these folders and process all recipes in them (depending on the day).
I keep the scripts in a Dropbox folder, too. That way I can easily upgrade/change them from anywhere.
The main work is done by the script https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=107722 published on this forum, the rest is just messing around until it works.

Cheers, Mixx

07-14-2012, 01:29 PM	#5
Mixx Zealot Posts: 143 Karma: 387 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: Kindle 3	My automated news feeds on a cheap laptop OK, just to close the thread, a couple of remarks. I have succeeded to configure an old laptop running Ubuntu with just 3 scripts to do the following: The laptop wakes up every morning at 6pm from hibernation and downloads a daily load of a number of recipes. Saturday mornings it additionally downloads more stuff for the weekend. After fetching and mailing the news feeds to my Kindle account at amazon is complete, the laptop hibernates to disk again (thereby consuming very little electric power). This is what I wanted to accomplish and it seems to work now. I am a happy camper. Anybody trying to do something similar should note that Old laptops might not be able to run the latest Ubuntu version, as starting with 12.04 there are kernel issues for old HW. The latest version of Calibre runs well on 10.04, thus this is not a big problem. Even if the rtcwake command (see first post in this thread) is working well, there are issues with waking up, the Ubuntu boot manager GRUB has sometimes problems (waits for user interaction). These can be fixed by configuring its scripts (/etc/grub.d/00_header with a timeout) and disabling legacy USB support in BIOS. rtcwake can go to deep sleep (S4) using a disk image, in which case it survives short power outages well. I use this mode (rtcwake -m disk...). rtcwake requires root privileges, which can be invoked by "sudo rtcwake..." in the script. By editing a config file via "visudo", one can specifiy that the user is permitted to run "sudo rtcwake" without having to enter the password (needed for the script). All of the above is documented in the newsgroups. I have minimal skills and could manage. I decided to put the recipes I like into two folders on Dropbox. That way I can manage them (selection, update, config, etc.) from my main PC. My scripts cycle through these folders and process all recipes in them (depending on the day). I keep the scripts in a Dropbox folder, too. That way I can easily upgrade/change them from anywhere. The main work is done by the script https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=107722 published on this forum, the rest is just messing around until it works. Cheers, Mixx Last edited by Mixx; 07-14-2012 at 02:10 PM.