Monday, August 21, 2017

Using selenium to clean-up gmail

Posting a quick piece of code to delete large number of mails from Gmail...
import time
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.implicitly_wait(10)

driver.get("https://mail.google.com/")
elem = driver.find_element_by_id("identifierId")
elem.clear()
elem.send_keys("YourEmailId@gmail.com")
elem = driver.find_element_by_id("identifierNext")
elem.click()

elem = driver.find_element_by_name("password")
#elem.clear()
elem.send_keys("YourPassword")
elem.send_keys(Keys.RETURN)

elem = driver.find_element_by_name("q")
#elem.clear()
elem.send_keys("label:YourLabel")
elem.send_keys(Keys.RETURN)

for x in range(1,50):
    elem = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//div[@id=':rr']/div/span/div")
    elem.click()
    time.sleep(5)
    elem = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//div[@id=':5']/div[2]/div/div/div/div/div[2]/div[3]/div/div")
    elem.click()
    time.sleep(5)

Now the story:
I had a large number of mails coming from a specific mailing group. I had created a label and rule label these mails with that label in Gmail. Today, when I opened Gmail, I found that I had used almost 100% of my storage. I first wrote an google app script to fix this issue. However, I soon came across the script invocation limitations set by google. So, I installed selenium for python, got the chromedriver and put it in the path and wrote the above script. Wonder where I got stuff like "//div[@id=':5']/div[2]/div/div/div/div/div[2]/div[3]/div/div"? I was trying to use selenium ide with FireFox. Though the IDE did not work, it gave me such useful info as above.

Steps:
0. Install python
1. Install selenium bindings for python (pip install selenium)
2. Install selenium driver for your browser (Download and extract to some folder. Then add that folder to your PATH)
3. Write this script (Use inspect element option in chrome, firefox selenium ide etc to know the elements that you want to manipulate)
4. Debug, fix issues and have fun!

Here are some useful links:
1. http://selenium-python.readthedocs.io/installation.html
2. https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/downloads
3. http://selenium-python.readthedocs.io/getting-started.html
4. http://www.seleniumhq.org/projects/ide/
5. http://selenium-python.readthedocs.io/navigating.html
6. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17533024/how-to-set-selenium-python-webdriver-default-timeout
7. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/time_sleep.htm

Note: You will have to go to trash after a while and click on empty trash.

Monday, May 22, 2017

Throwing in F25 into a machine running W10

Well, I did this today. I was on W10+Ubuntu 16.04 combo till now. Unfortunately for me, my Ubuntu was unaware of my HP240 hardware drivers. I went completely offline as both my wireless, ethernet, and BT were not recognized by Ubuntu. On top of that, I could not find cdc_ether drivers to tether using my mobile. After some struggle with trying different kernels, I decided to try F25. I used F25 media writer for windows. The first issue was that the link provided in Fedora download page does not have latest writer. https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/ points media writer version 4.0.8 which crashed before starting after installation. But, you get the latest from here and it will work (4.1.0 worked for me).

I used a 16 GB driver and after I booted to this drive, I installed fedora on my Ubuntu partition after deleting it. However, the installer cried out about not having GPT partition for boot loader. I just told it not to install a boot loader. I was hoping that I could get it installed after the OS is installed.

After OS was installed, I booted to HDD. It was stuck at grub. It will not proceed beyond that point as I have destroyed Ubuntu partitions and grub was looking for those partitions. All I got was a recovery shell of grub. I booted again to F25 USB stick installation. Did a chroot to newly created partition and tried almost all that was told here. No way. Error after error. My Sunday was getting spoiled. Just reminded me of those golden words about Sendmail....

I was getting disturbed. Decided to take a sure to work shortcut. Did the following.

  1. Went and bought another 32 GB pen drive
  2. Again booted to USB Linux image and downloaded Windows 10 dvd from Microsoft site and wrote it to a DVD. (No, I did not have to use this.)
  3. Took a back-up of MBR to pen drive
  4. Installed syslinux and recovered MBR (I was skeptical about effectiveness of doing this for W10 as it was suggested for every version of windows except Windows 10)
  5. After that step, my machine was able to boot to Windows (Hurray... a tiny step close to normalcy)
  6. Deleted the partitions in new 16 GB pen drive and also all Linux partitions from HDD
  7. Started the install to HDD process and selected both sda and sdc (pen drive) as target for installations
  8. Set pen drive as boot device and gave installer control over making partitions. It did a very good job by creating boot and EFI folders on pen driver and swap space and root on free space available in sda.
  9. Installation was complete and I removed all external drives and booted the device to Windows 
  10. Later I plugged in the pen drive and viola, and the device boots to Linux
I will take some time later and figure out how to avoid the pen drive. But till then, I have a working laptop that has both W10 and F25


Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Is JIO doctoring speed tests?

Well, it was only last week when one of my friend showed me the speed test app of jio reported over a few mbps as the download speed where as the app by TRAI showed the speed as 0.05mbps.

Today, I noticed something bizarre. I was watching youtube videos and suddenly speed went down and the videos started buffering. In a few seconds, i got a message from jio pay. I understood what happened and without checking the message, I opened the settings and changed mobile data to my vodafone sim. However, after a few minutes, i realized that it was close to 12am when it happened. So, at 12.03, I switched back to JIO only to find my videos still buffering. Now comes the fun part...

I opened the TRAI speed test app and checked the speed. It was showing 3.88 and 5.82 mbps for download and upload respectively. Something must be wrong. I checked youtube again. No change! It was buffering as before. I had half a mind to call up JIO guys and ask them why is youtube buffering at 3.88 mbps?

Anyway, before I did that, I opened the sms that i had got from JIO pay and checked its contents. Wow! It had news for me!

1. JIO does not restore your speeds at 12am. They do it at 2am
2. Till 2am my speed will be 128kbps

Now the mystery: If my speed was throttled at 128kbps, how did TRAI app read 3.88mbps? I believe this is a clear indication of the fact that JIO is doctoring the speed test results!