SSH is one communication protocol that is used to access remote systems all the time. Short for “Secure Shell”, SSH provides a secure channel for data exchange, unlike Telnet and other insecure remote shells. Telnet, e.g., transmits all data including passwords in plain text.
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 …read more

I use Launchy and so have no need for program launch icons, be it on the Desktop or Quick Launch or Windows Start. I don’t even use the Quick Launch toolbar and all I knew until recently was that you add a quick launch icon by dragging any program (or a shortcut pointing to that program) into the toolbar.\\r\\n\\r\\nToday, when I accidentally deleted one of the quick launch icons of a machine not belonging to me, I found the obscure location of the quick launch icons:\\r\\n
%APPDATA%\\\\Microsoft\\\\Internet Explorer\\\\Quick Launch
\\r\\n\\r\\n(APPDATA is an environment variable which can be found by typing echo %APPDATA% …read more

DOS has a few commands like find, findstr and sort which can be used to manipulate text. ($ help <cmd> shows the usage help for all these commands.) However, their usage is very different from those that a Unix user may be familiar with.
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 …read more

Environment variables are a set of dynamic variables that can determine the environment in which a process runs. While they are more easily visible and often used in Unix-based OSs, they are equally essential on Windows. A little knowledge is especially important to write batch programs (.BAT).
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 …read more

Especially in systems that are part of an enterprise domain, you may have noticed a warning message after pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del and before the login window. It is called a Legal Notice. While it is irritating most of the times, there is a good reason why it exists.
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 …read more

It has been nearly two months since I introduced Cygwin. We’ve seen how to install Cygwin, customize the terminal, a few text editors and a tabbed terminal emulator. Enough with the playfulness. One final configuration and let us move on to the geekier fun.
Directory Structure
Cygwin uses the POSIX notation standard in paths. That is, instead of ‘\’ as in Windows, it uses the more convenient ‘/’ as in Unix. The web follows the same notation. For instance, take http://thatdamnpc.com/category/cygwin-unix. On the web host, one might find a directory called “category” in the main directory and a sub-directory “cygwin-unix” along with …read more

The PC boot drive (usually C:) has a few folders, names of some of which don’t make sense. It is not wrong to panic when you see some shady name among them.
e.g. The drive on which you installed Windows usually has the following folders:
Documents and Settings
Drivers,… and similar ones
Program Files
WINDOWS
In addition, I have folders called cygwin, Downloads, and SysinternalsSuite. Until recently, I also had Msocache. Msocache is not always in C: but could be on any non-removable and non-network drive with over 1.5GB free disk space.
The Msocache folder is created during the Microsoft Office installation and is called the “Local …read more

While Windows Live Writer is a wonderful blogging software that lets bloggers work offline, it is poorly documented. Ironical. On top of it, the Windows Live Writer blog, much like other Windows blogs has no search feature to check for help.
When a blogger posts a blog through Windows Live Writer, it also maintains a copy of the post on the local machine. For regular bloggers, that adds up to a lot of space with time. A “proper delete” through the Open –> Delete makes it clear that deleting a post is equivalent to deleting it from the local machine as …read more

PuTTY is a free Windows client that allows users to log into remote systems through raw, Telnet, SSH, remote login, and serial connections. It is primarily used for logging into UNIX systems through Telnet and SSH, and at 444KB (direct executable) is  very popular with UNIX lovers even though its last version of 0.60 beta has not been updated in nearly two years.
I recently discovered that there is a tabbed version of PuTTY called the PuTTY Connection Manager allowing multiple PuTTY instances in a single window.

PuTTY Connection Manager has several other features like workspace customizations, auto-login and post-login commands, Import/Export …read more