More populistic I could say this is about finding out if it is possible to build a device which lets a human sleep and wake up again purposely.

Sounds interesting? Do not hesitate to read the thesis and/or leave a comment!

The reason for writing it was that I gain an advantage (to other people using the library) when I renew every day (if there are reservations on the book one with the oldest renewing date has to bring it back – at least as far as I understand the behaviour of the Aleph software).

The help should be self explaining:

Usage: ./alephrenew.pl [-h] [-q] -b <baseurl> -u <username> -p <password> [-r <seconds>]

-h    : this help message
-q    : quiet (suppress success message)
-b    : baseurl without trailing slash (eg. http://aleph.ub.tuwien.ac.at)
-u    : username (eg. $E123456) – you will probably need to escape the “$”
-p    : password – your date of birth in the form of YYYYMMDD (eg. 19730425)
if you did not change it
-r    : wait random time between 1 and “seconds” seconds (before starting and
1 to 30 seconds between the requests – so it does not look like a script)

Examples:
./alephrenew.pl -q -b http://aleph.ub.tuwien.ac.at -u \$E123456 -p 19730425 -r 3600
./alephrenew.pl -b http://aleph.univie.ac.at -u \$E098765 -p 19851224

A crontab entry may look like this:
0 0 * * 2-6 /path/to/alephrenew.pl -q -b http://aleph.ub.tuwien.ac.at -u \$E3862419 -p 0wN4g3 -r 7200

It’s tested with the libraries of the Vienna University of Technology and the University of Vienna but should work with any other library using the Aleph software.

It is released under the terms of the GPLv2.

I do appreciate your feedback!

Meine Empfehlung: Unipiraten