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

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 other category names in it.

‘/’, the root directory, is considered the parent directory under which all directories fall, like /usr, /bin, /lib, /tmp, /var, etc. /A/B/C/D/E/F.txt would mean a file F.txt present in E, a sub-directory of D, which is a sub-directory of C, which is a sub-directory of B, which is a sub-directory of A, which is a sub-directory of /, the root.

If you look at the contents of / (ls / or dir /) in your Cygwin terminal, you will notice a sub-directory called cygdrive. This contains all the Windows drives in it. Your C: drive can be got to through /cygdrive/c.

For convenience, we can remove this /cygdrive prefix in the following ways:

1. $ cd /
    $ mkdir c e
    $ mount c: /c
    $ mount e: /e

2. $ mount –c /

In this way your main Windows drives will be direct sub-directories of /.

PATH
Check what your path is using echo $PATH command. It should have at least the following: /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/c/WINDOWS/
system32:/c/WINDOWS:/c/WINDOWS/System32/Wbem:/c/SysinternalsSuite

Using this path setting, we can run even those programs that we could run from the MS Command Prompt. If you have any other files which can be run from command line, add them to the path using your .profile. We’ve already seen that.

Good to go from next week.

Post from: EveryJoe

POSIX and PATH

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 Install Source”. It contains a copy of the install source files and is a hidden folder. The folder is not necessary after the installation and it is safe to get rid of. Save up to 270 MB disk space.

The Microsoft Help and Support site has a helpful article about Msocache explaining in detail its purpose, and ways of removing it. “Do not delete the MSOCACHE folder by using Microsoft Windows Explorer,” the article warns.

In the past and more recently too, I have deleted the folder directly and I had no problems. But I now learnt that it is not the right way to do it.

Post from: EveryJoe

You Can Delete Msocache

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 well as from the blog.

Some might like the backup, but we won’t mind an option to delete posts from the machine alone, do we? I am currently using a dirty trick to get it done.

All the posts you are working on using Windows Live Writer are stored as .WPOST files in the folder “My Documents\My Weblog Posts” under two sub-folders “Drafts” and “Recent Posts”. Delete the posts you want from them.

There is also a “cache.xml” file in the “Recent Posts” folder. This is the file responsible for keeping posts on the local machine in sync with those on your blogs. It is better left alone.

Please let me know if there is a cleaner way to do this. I am still a beginner user of Windows Live Writer.

Post from: EveryJoe

How To Delete Posts From Windows Live Writer

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 connection info to XML, and localization in French. Though the installation installs a help document, it runs as a standalone application and is easily portable.

The app crashed on a few instances while I was using it, and it takes a few seconds to start, but I find it very useful. Also, considering that it is still in version 0.7 alpha and is actively being updated, I have every hope that it will become more stable in the coming future.

The app was developed using C# and it needs Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. Unlike PuTTY this is not open source but a freeware.

Image Source: Putty Connection Manager website.

Post from: EveryJoe

PuTTY Connection Manager for Tabbed PuTTY

Microsoft has a knack for spreading misery in simple ways. An appreciable quality during Christmas time. A recent example is the “updated” Microsoft Office Outlook versions which stopped carrying a “Minimze to system tray” option from the Tools -> Options.

I spent way too much time under the presumption that it may have just been moved to some other incovenient location because it immediately didn’t register in my mind that I had a Microsoft app before me. Why exactly would someone take pains to remove something already existing and working normally can be a philosophical debate that can take us all the remaining days of this year and more. And I don’t wish to do that for this vacation. I should probably be thankful to them because this is their way of offering me another blog post.

So. There is a way around. Thankfully.

1. Open the Registry Editor (Press Win+R, type “regedit”, Enter).
2. Navigate down the tree: My Computer -> HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Microsoft -> Office -> <Version-Number> -> Outlook -> Preferences. <Version-Number> is the version number of the Office you are using and can be found in any Help -> About of a Microsoft Office application: 10 for Office 2000; 11 for Office 2003, 12 for Office 2007.
3. Create a New Value of type “DWORD Value” (through Edit menu or right-click). Name in MinToTray. Modify its Value Data to 1 to enable system tray minimization.

You should be able to minimze Outlook to the system tray now.

P.S. This is a fairly straight-forward thing to do, but you might want to save the curent registries (export) before tweaking.

Image Source: Regedit Screenshot taken on my laptop.

Post from: EveryJoe

How to Minimize Microsoft Outlook to System Tray