Howto Take Screenshots in Solaris 7/8/9/10 (CDE)

This is one of those not so technical tip but certainly the one we need when it comes to talk to Sun Support or creating a documentation. yes, its taking screenshots in Sun Solaris Operating Environment using CDE. Sun Solaris X utilities uses “xwd“, an application that is standard among the X utilities can be used to take screenshots. 

xwd dumps the output of a window into a file that can be viewed with xwud, or converted with convert (part of ImageMagick package), xv or another tool to a more usable image type, like png.

There are also more convenient tools to make a Screenshot. You should use more reliable import (part of ImageMagick package) instead of xwd.

To Take Screenshot of a Frame

When logged onto the CDE, open a terminal session and run the command as follows:

sunsolaris# xwd -frame > screenshot.xwd

This will prompt you to select a window (the cursor becomes a +), then it will take a picture of the window (as it appears on the screen), the “-frame” options will have it also include the window managers decorative borders, then the file is converted to png.

Fullscreen Screenshot

A full screen screenshot can be done without any frame being set

sunsolaris# xwd -root > screenshot.xwd

Screenshot and Convert togethor

sunsolaris# xwd -frame | convert xwd:- screenshot.png

Screenshot after “n” seconds

Now, comes the interesting bit, you can take screenshots after a delay time (say 10 seconds). All you do is to use a sleep command as follows

sunsolaris# sleep 10; xwd -root -out screenshot.xwd

To print the image captured using Laserjet

xpr -device ljet /tmp/myimage | lp -d printer

where “printer” is the installed printer.

This file can now be converted to PNG, JPG,GIF using GIMP or any other image editing software.