My Geek Notes

I can’t help but get really excited about XMBC getting a Linux port. I’ve got a modded XBox that I use to play a variety of media formats: XVID, DVD, MP3, MP4, etc. It’ll even act as a karaoke machine if you have CDG files to go along with MP3 files. The fact that it’s getting ported to Linux means that without a serious amount of effort (unlike most things with Linux) I can get a simple media PC setup that’ll run just about anything I want - at least, that’s the dream, right?

Found this interesting map of Linux distributions today. I’m sure this doesn’t include them all, but it was interesting nonetheless.

I’ve been using Linux (Slackware w/ Fluxbox) as my primary desktop OS for the last couple of years and continue to tweak it to perfection adding or modifying apps. I’ve done the same thing with my Windows (XP Professional) laptop over the same time period as I use both Linux and Windows for work in testing how websites render across browsers and platforms.

This last week I’ve been looking into a solution to my number one annoyance with Windows - the lack of a decent terminal/shell app. The command prompt doesn’t even come close to what I can do with Aterm or Xterm on my Linux box. When I SSH onto a server I can use Putty, sure, but even that is lacking in the stylistic options.

The solution - Cygwin. I printed the 66 page manual with the intention of tweaking it to do what I need, but my primary reason for installing it was to get Xterm and OpenSSH installed so I can finally have a decent terminal/shell app on Windows. The initial install does not include either Xterm or OpenSSH, but has a lot of the other core tools for Linux. Here’s the simple set of steps I used to do the install.

1. Go to http://www.cygwin.com/ and download the setup.exe file (the “Install or update now!” link).
2. Run the setup.exe file and walk through the wizard - I left everything default except for the “Download Site” where I chose ftp://mirrors.xmission.com because it’s the closest one to my location.
3. On the select packages step expand the “Net” section and click on “openssh: The OpenSSH server and client programs” (it will select other required packages for you like “openssl: The OpenSSL runtime environment” right below it along with any others in other sections).
4. Also, on the select packages step expand the “X11″ section and click on “xterm: Xterm - X terminal” (again, it will select other required packages for you).
5. Click Next to proceed.
6. On the last step check the 2 boxes to “Create icon on Desktop” and “Add icon to Start Menu”.
7. You should now have a Cygwin shortcut icon on your desktop, clicking it will bring up a command prompt and create some default files then put you at the prompt line for your input.
8. type startx at the prompt, hit enter, this will open up the xterm window where you can type ssh blah, blah, blah.
9. Any time you want to install other apps, just run the setup.exe file again and add or remove your apps - super easy!

I’ll be adding some more tweak instructions as I work my way through the manual and install some more of the apps that are available. There is even the option of getting Gnome and KDE working under Cygwin - check out those options with the following links.

For Gnome - http://cygnome.sourceforge.net/
For KDE - http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/

I’d love to hear about your installs, setups, and tweaks.

As a Linux enthusiast I spend 95% of my computer time using Linux as my desktop, but also have to spend some time on Windows for work to test things, etc - the other 5%. Zipping up my files (lots of text files) and using them between the two platforms can be a nightmare because of the way they both handle newlines. Windows seems to be OK with the way Linux does it, but not the other way around (guaranteed to break your PERL code). If you’ve ever opened a DOS text file on Linux you’ve witnessed how every line ends with ^M which makes the content almost unreadable.

The fix I’ve found is a command line tool called “fromdos”. The name says it all. It also has a sister command called “todos”. I use Slackware as my Linux distro and it came on the standard install available to any non-root user. The main reason I’m posting this little how-to is because when I first attempted to use “fromdos” it didn’t work right; just kind of hung until I canceled it. Here is how you do it - the $> signifies the prompt.

$>fromdos <dosfile.txt> unixfile.txt
or
$>todos <unixfile.txt> dosfile.txt

The most important part to remember and the part I didn’t realize is that the < and > surrounding the first file name need to be there and are part of the command. This is because “fromdos” and “todos” are meant to be used as filters so the “hanging” I experienced was them waiting for input from STDIN.

If you’re not sure what kind of file type you are dealing with (DOS or Unix) you can always run the following command:

$>file filename.txt

Which should provide one of the following two results:

For DOS:
$>filename.txt: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators

For Unix:
$>filename.txt: ASCII text

At some point I may whip up some sort of a bash file to automate and do batch conversions. Maybe even test the file type first so to not mess with any files that don’t need to be touched. For now though, that little command should save me some time so I don’t end up troubleshooting my PERL script that all the time had the wrong newlines.

From the first day I started programming, I was taught that I should try to use, as a development environment, the same platform for which the code is destined to ultimately run. I realize that this isn’t always practical (fat clients, mobile apps, and cross platform development come to mind) but it usually is with web applications.

I started hacking in 1999 as a classic ASP developer, At that time, the platform of choice was Windows NT 4.0 with the necessary Option Pack. Times have changed since then and I’ve long since settled into the comfort of Server 2003. It’s got its quirks and, like any operating system, isn’t perfect. But there are a few simple things that can help Server 2003 (I use Enterprise edition since I get to choose any version with my MSDN subscription) behave a bit more like a desktop (read: Windows XP) to make it more user friendly as an everyday workhorse.

1. Enable sound - even though the drivers may be installed, the sound card will still need to be enabled. Use the Control Panel -> Sounds and Audio Devices Properties to enable it.
2. Turn video hardware acceleration all the way up - from Display Properties -> Settings tab -> Advanced -> Troubleshoot tab -> move the slider all the way to Full. You may need to do this for multiple monitors and displays if you have them.
3. Enable DirectX - from the run command, type “DXDiag” and be sure to enable all of the necessary accelerations. This is required if you want to run any games. Otherwise, it probably doesn’t matter.
4. Enable Themes (not necessary unless you want it to look like Windows XP) - from the run command, type “Services.msc”. Find the service named “Themes” and enable it, set it to start automatically, and then start it. You’ll be able to apply whatever theme you want.
5. Disable the pesky “Shutdown Event Tracker” logging junk - from the run command, type “MMC” -> choose File -> Add / Remove Snap-In -> Add -> Group Policy Object Editor In this snap-in, find Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Display Shutdown Event Tracker. Change this to disabled. There are quite a few settings in this snap-in that might be of interest. I suggest browsing through them to tweak some of the settings.

These are the typical items I do to get my machine in a usable state for development. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some key items, but that’s my typical starting point.

Download Required Files:
libtasn1-0.2.17.tar.gz
libgpg-error-1.1.tar.gz
libgcrypt-1.2.2.tar.gz
opencdk-0.5.8.tar.gz
gnutls-1.3.0.tar.bz2
gaim-1.5.0.tar.gz

Install Gaim:
Install the apps in the following order:

5 Step:
./configure
make
make check
make install
make clean

ldconfig

1 ) libtasn1 (5 step) + ldconfig
2 ) libgpg-error (5 step) + ldconfig
3 ) libgcrypt (5 step) + ldconfig
4 ) opencdk (5 step)
5 ) gnutls (5 step)
6 ) gaim (see below)

Compiling Gaim:
./configure –enable-nss=no
make
make check
make install
make clean
ldconfig