After my initial shock that a simple command like “right-clicking” wasn’t obvious to someone I realized I had to slow down and communicate as visually as possible to get my point across.

I then had to explain items like using the Start > Run command.

We then moved onto what to look for when searching for “Properties” of a file and to look for tabs to get to different areas of the interface.

There was even a little bit of time spent on the discussion of file path structure and the differences between backslashes \\ and forward slashes //.

All-in-all the exercise was good for me. It was an eye-opener to look at things very differently and try to understand how different users may look at applications or interfaces I may create. It got me thinking though, what does the average computer user really know?

Image: sxc.hu

Post from: EveryJoe

Getting Back to the Basics

We’ve all heard the analogy of giving a man a fish or teaching him to fish. The same holds true for technology. I can keep doing something for you, or I can teach you how to do it. The great thing is that sometimes the task is really so simple I don’t even need to teach you. You just need to do it yourself a couple of times and you’ll figure it out.

If you need directions somewhere, go visit Google Maps (http://local.google.com) which is my personal preference and put your address in. Then you can click on the little link that says get directions and put your other address in. Done! Print it out, email the directions, embed the map into your website or blog.

Need a phone number? Don’t call me and ask me what it is. Use the Internet and you can find just about anything you want.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to call my dad and remind him how to move files from his 3.5" disk over to a CD-ROM.

Post from: EveryJoe

How to Stop Relying on Others for the Simple Stuff

I on the other hand think about my computer skills and see all the other things I wish I knew how to do or just knew more about. More than general networking stuff? I think I’m clueless. Hard-core programming, LOADS of information to still digest and learn.

However, in my “real” job, I’m regularly reminded how much general computer knowledge isn’t out there. In helping support the applications and websites I develop during the day, I come into contact with a number of computer users that it’s far from second nature on what to do.

It’s for that reason that I think I’m going to do some short and quick, general knowledge posts about computers right here. If you’re like me and serve as the tech-support guy for people (particularly friends and family) then hopefully you’ll be able to direct some people to these posts for a quick tip on how to use their computer more efficiently, or just at a little bit higher level than they have in the past.

If you’re not the “computer geek” and have questions on how to do stuff and you’d like me to tackle them and give you a quick post on what to do, feel free to leave me a comment and let me know what you’d like me to try and help you with here in the future.

I look forward to hopefully hearing from a variety of people on this one.

Image Source: www.sxc.hu

Post from: EveryJoe

Some Computer Basics 101

For a system A to connect to a remote system B through SSH, A needs a SSH client (like PuTTY for Windows) and B needs a SSHD server running all the time so as to accept incoming connections.

SSH is a proprietary software offered by SSH Communications Security, and as an alternative the open source version OpenSSH is being widely used. On all Unix-based OSs, the OpenSSH SSHD server is installed by default during the installation of the operating system. On Windows, however, it is not the case.

You can install it on top of Cygwin very easily. You will need administrator access with a password set for the account. When you run the Cygwin setup to download or install various packages, select openssh which will select all the other packages it requires.

Once you complete the install, to configure SSHD run $ ssh-host-config –y from the terminal. This will automatically answer ‘yes’ for the yes/no questions. Give an appropriate password that follows your system rules if an sshd_server is being created or ignore this step. Specify the value of the environment variable CYGWIN as “ntsec tty” for WinXP and Vista and “binmode ntsec tty” for Windows 2003 Server (without quotes). At the end of this process, the sshd service will have automatically started and placed itself among the Windows startup list.

If you have any problems, try following this article for WinXP and Vista and this one for Windows 2003 Server or drop me a message.

Post from: EveryJoe

Installing and Configuring SSHD Server on Cygwin

%APPDATA%\\\\Microsoft\\\\Internet Explorer\\\\Quick Launch

\\r\\n\\r\\n(APPDATA is an environment variable which can be found by typing echo %APPDATA% at the command prompt.)\\r\\n\\r\\nI checked it on Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server, but it is possible that this location is preserved across OSs. I can’t fathom the reason behind placing quick launch icons in the APPDATA folder belonging to the Internet Explorer. Some might consider it harmless, but say when a custom slipstream installation of Windows is made where the Internet Explorer is not installed, it is possible that Quick Launch is also gone. The location is senseless and a bug, whatever maybe its priority. It is just a tiny example of bad software.\\r\\n\\r\\nWhile there are tools that can help you clean your quick launch cache, etc., if you are not a complete newbie the best way would be to navigate to the Quick Launch folder and see the various files present in that folder (mostly .LNK or shortcut files). You could see for yourself if the files are wrongly pointing to any dead or moved links and update them if necessary. You can also add your own shortcuts directly using Right Click –> New –> Shortcut.

Post from: EveryJoe

The Obscure Location of Quick Launch

One of the best things about Cygwin is that these commands useful for “quick and dirty” work on large chunks of text data are easy to learn, are consistent across all Unix-based OSs, have a number of options, and are quite extensive. When used in combination, they can save a lot of programming.

($ <command> <option> <inputs> is the general format for almost any of these commands. $ <command> –help shows the usage information.)

Note that all the commands below work on text files, not just any files with text content in them.  e.g. a .DOC or a .HTML contains many other headers which are also taken into account when processed by these commands.

wc: wc is short for “word count”, but it counts more than just words. It can count chars (-m), lines (-l) apart from words (-w).

uniq: When files have a large number of lines with many identical ones, uniq returns only once all lines among the input files after discarding repetitions. –c also gives the number of times each line has been repeated, –u returns only the unique lines discarding any line which has been repeated more than once, –i considers two lines non-unique if they are only differing the case.

sort: Say you have several files with numbers or words that need to be sorted. Sort can sort a concatenation of several files at once, where each line is considered a separate value to be sorted. The sorting order can be specified as in –d means dictionary-order, –f means ignore case, –n means numeric sort, –u means sort only unique lines.

grep: Short for “get regular expression”, grep can be used to search for a specific string or string pattern (called regular expression) in given text. $ grep “grep” <this-post> shows all the lines with the string “grep” in them. –c is used to count the number of occurrences, –i is used to ignore case, –v is used to invert the result.

sed: sed is used primarily to find and replace a string or string pattern from files. The most common usage is $ sed ‘s/<find-string>/<replace-with-string>/g’ which replaces all occurrences of <find-string> with <replace-with-string>.

Post from: EveryJoe

Cygwin Commands for Text Manipulation

The command env typed in your command prompt or Cygwin terminal will list the entire set of environment variables and their current values. My Computer –> Properties –> Advanced –> Environment Variables will also show you the Windows environment variables divided into two categories: System variables and User variables.

While on cmd each variable can be referred to using %ENVIRONMENT-VARIABLE%, on Cygwin and all Unix-based OSs they are referred to using $ENVIRONMENT-VARIABLE. ($ echo %ENVIRONMENT-VARIABLE% or $ echo $ENVIRONMENT-VARIABLE)

ALLUSERSPROFILE, APPDATA, COMPUTERNAME, HOMEDRIVE, HOMEPATH, PATH, PROGRAMFILES, SYSTEMDRIVE, SystemRoot, USERNAME, USERPROFILE, WINDOWS are a some important environment variables some of which may be modified and are usually quite useful while writing batch programs. OS, NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS, PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE, PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER, PROCESSOR_LEVEL are a few other interesting variables which are best left untouched.

$ set ENVIRONMENT-VARIABLE=value can be used to change an existing or define a new environment variable.

Image Source: Microsoft Windows on my desktop.

Post from: EveryJoe

Environment Variables

Especially in labs, for instance, all systems have similar account usernames and passwords for convenience. It is not uncommon for someone to accidentally log into someone else’s system and proceed as though it were his or her own. If you are an administrator of a system which needs restricted access, you can create a custom legal notice which warns other users from accidental misuse.

Open the Registry Editor (Ctrl+R –> regedit), navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon, and you’ll find two registry keys called LegalNoticeCaption and LegalNoticeText. Create them using Right Click –> New –> String Value and modify them with the text you wish to include.

In UNIX-based OSs, a MOTD serves this purpose. Even the .profile may be modified to include the MOTD.

While you are at this, you may also change the registry keys DefaultDomainName, DefaultUserName, AltDefaultDomainName, AltDefaultUserName to suit your preferences.

Post from: EveryJoe

How to Set Windows Logon Warning Message

find is one of the most useful commands when you also have to search within unknown files and make further operations on the result set. It does a recursive search, looking in all subdirectories.

The first set of arguments is always the paths where the search should initiate. $ find /home /tmp <remaining arguments> would search based on the remaining arguments in /home, /tmp and all their subdirectories. If unspecified, the default path is taken as ‘.’, the current working directory.

To search for a specific filename pattern, –name <regexp> is used as the next argument. $ find /home /tmp –name *.sh returns all .SH files present in /home, /tmp and their subdirectories.

Instead of piping, to perform any operation on each of the results returned, –exec is used. $ find /home /tmp –name *.sh –exec grep todo ‘{}’ \; –print searches for the string todo in the above returned files. grep does the search and ‘{}’ implies that all results need to be processed. The –print prints the final output, the actual lines containing the specified string in the files.

Instead of grep, it could be chmod or chown or any operation that can be done of files. These above options are the most common use cases of find.

There are a number of other options to refine the search like complex expressions with boolean operators, the maximum and minimum depth of subdirectories that need to be traversed, the modification times and permissions on files, the file types, etc. You can read about all these in the manual page.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google Your PC Using Find

IMHO, both Windows and Google Desktop Search consume too many resources.

e.g. Windows Desktop Search recommends Pentium 1 GHz Processor and 256 MB RAM, 500 MB of free hard disk space,… A process that starts automatically all the time. Note that we don’t search for files on our desktop all the time and mostly have an idea which file sits in which folder. A desktop search is for that occasion where we’ve “lost” some file, now and then.

Cygwin provides the best alternatives: locate and find.

locate coupled with updatedb helps you find any file (even hidden ones and those in temporary cache folders) in your system.

When you run the updatedb ($ updatedb), as the name suggests, it updates its database creating a simple index of all the files that are present in the system, with full paths. The first time you run it, like any other indexing application, it takes a few minutes to index the whole system. From the next time, it barely takes a minute, if you run it periodically, that is. I run updatedb about once every week to keep the index fresh.

After updating the file index, you can start using locate.

$ locate <substring-of-filename>

gives you all the files on your PC which contain the substring in their filenames, within a second. Even the files that accidentally got saved in some obscure temporary folder can be retrieved easily.

There are more options to update and locate files with extra preferences but I never had to use them much. The default usage suffices.

The great thing, apart from the speed of retrieval, is that this is not resource intensive and a dedicated process is not always running on your system for it. Of course, you need Cygwin installed.

Post from: EveryJoe

Locate: A Desktop Search Alternative