Trace appvm window activity

User Support
1

Hi @all,

I want to track my app-vm window usage for sake of automatic timesheet preparation. I really waste time and money on this personal ‘weakness’, but I can’t help myself. That’s why I need an automatic solutions without any user interaction.
I tested arbtt, which collects the window manager x property and logs those pretty forward for later statistics…
Is there a way to adjust the app-vm window manager privacy to track myself? Even if it breaks the security boundaries for this special behaviour…

thanks a lot and kind regards

2

What exactly do you want to track? It may be easier to help you if we understand the goal.

Maybe this will interest you: WORKING: Guide for creating a logging qube (I.E. sys-log) - WIP

3
1 Like
4

Thanks for your answer. I actually want to track the window manager activities to get my focused applications with their window titles. I already tried to retrieve the info’s via syslog, but I need more details to get real stats. It’s won’t help to know that I opened firefox.
For example: the running window of my current firefox is labeled “[private] collect app-vm window usage - user support - qubes os forum” and this label is a window manager x property (pls correct me if I’m wrong). I want to collect this x property information, but dom0 handles the app-vm window manager and blocks the gathering - from my understanding… That’s why I asked for window manager privacy adjustment. I know it’s a very special question :3 But while typing this I thought about tracking dom0, instead of domU…:thinking:

5

this looks promising! <3 thanks for your input :slight_smile:

1 Like
6

I found this: stuff/qfind.sh at main · unman/stuff · GitHub

If you want to get the window title:

$ ID=`xdotool getwindowfocus`
$ xprop WM_NAME -id $ID | cut -f2 -d\"

For testing purposes, you may want to add a sleep timer before you assign the ID variable and switch to the window you want to track, otherwise you’ll get the ID of the terminal window.

To see all properties:

$ xprop -id $ID
1 Like
7

I made a logical mistake while trying to trace the window activity on the appvm itself, because dom0 prevents the capture. I finally get it running on dom0! The result is fabulous for my purpose :smiley:

arbtt
arbtt1212×508 79.1 KB

For those who are interested:
I build the lightweight haskell application (arbtt) for fedora 32 and send it to dom0, where it starts at boot time. I’m happy, that I didn’t have to break the security boundaries since dom0 and the window activity information are isolated. Its also possible to customize the output to categorize and order everything.