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lothar56 · Mar 25, 2006, 06:20 PM

Alright, I've been working on this for a while and I can't quite figure it out. The goal is to be able to let whoever wants to change the desktop picture on my powerbook pictureframe do it over the internet. It's a powerbook 5300cs-100MHz/16MB of RAM with a 3Com PCMCIA ethernet card that I just got working. It's currently running 9.0.4, but i'm downloading the 9.1 updater right now.
One thing I thought of was using a program like DP Autochanger. It can automatically grab a picture from a web address and set it as the desktop. It checks every minute for a new picture, so my idea was to use my own web server (Beige G3-G4/450, 10.4.5) and have a file called desktop.jpg which could be easily replaced by anyone using a PHP uploader. The PB would then look to that one address each minute and update the desktop. But I couldn't get that working, and I'd rather there be some kind of alert when there is a new picture put up. Any suggestions?

lothar56 · Mar 25, 2006, 07:00 PM

Update: I got DP autochanger to select pictures from a folder on the network drive that gets mounted at startup. The problem is I want the user to be able to choose a single desktop picture for it to display. I also have to access the server directly to put the picture there, I can't get a PHP uploader figured out (Please check my thread in Web Developer if you can help!)
Any ideas?

CharlesS · Mar 25, 2006, 09:51 PM

You could SSH in and try this command:

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to set the desktop picture to POSIX file "/foo/bar.jpg"'

lothar56 · Mar 26, 2006, 01:42 AM

I don't know how to SSH in, and does that work in OS9? BTW I'm still needing help getting this to work...I'm open to any ideas.

Spliff · Mar 26, 2006, 03:41 AM

ChangeDesktop can do it, I think. Check the "Network" tab in the ChangeDesktop preferences. Lots of options there.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/6705