: Cyberpunk Now :

Tips & Tricks... (Windows XP)
>>> ReInstalling WindowsXP >>>

If you need to reinstall WindowsXP and want to keep all your current installed applications and settings:

Start WindowsXP

Go to the location of your source files

Run WINNT32 /unattend

I've often need to do this to repair something that had gotten corrupted and didn't want to do a clean install.

Windows XP Tips & Tricks...
>>> Not Displaying Previous Network Share Shortcuts >>>

By default, when you go to Network Places, it will scan and show shortcuts to previous network shares. To turn this off and remove any current shortcuts:

1. Open up the Windows Explorer
2. Go to Tools / Folder Options / View
3. The top section should be Files and Folders
4. Uncheck Automatically search for network folders and printers
5. Then go into Network Neighborhood
6. Select all the previous netowork connections Delete them

Next time you look at the Network Neighborhood, they should not repopulate.

Linux How To...
>>> Using FTP in Linux >>>

It's easy to use ftp. Let's say you want to connect to the anonymous ftp site metalab.unc.edu, to download the latest Linux kernel source. At the command line, type:

$ ftp metalab.unc.edu

The ftp program will attempt to connect to metalab.unc.edu. Another way to do this is to run ftp from the command line with no parameters, and use the open command, with the site name as an argument:

$ ftp
ftp> open metalab.unc.edu

Logging into an FTP server

When you connect to an FTP site, it will ask you for a login (pressing enter will log in as your local user name, in this case, foo: We log in as anonymous or ftp, to get to the public archive.

220 helios.oit.unc.edu FTP server (Version wu-2.6.0(2) Wed Nov 17 14:44:12
EST 1999) ready.
Name (metalab.unc.edu:foo):

Now, we enter a complete e-mail address as the password (this is what most public FTP sites request).

331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
Password:

After a successful login, the following information is given to us:

Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp>

File transfer types

After you log in to an ftp site, ftp will print out the file transfer type. In our case, it is binary. Binary mode transfers the files, bit by bit, as they are on the FTP server. Ascii mode, however, will download the text directly. You can type ascii or binary to switch between the types. You want to download the kernel source, so you leave the file transfer type at binary. The binary type is also what you would use for any non-text files -- such as graphic images, zip/gzip archives, executable programs, etc. If in doubt, use binary mode.

Navigating and listing directories

You do an ls to see a list of the files. The ls command on ftp servers is executed on the remote server, so the command line options that you can use with it vary from server to server. The most common options are generally available, check the manpage for ls for details.

ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
total 33590
-r--r--r-- 1 root other 34348506 Dec 03 03:53 IAFA-LISTINGS
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 7 Jul 15 1997 README -> WELCOME
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 890 Nov 15 13:11 WELCOME
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root other 512 Jul 15 1997 bin
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root other 512 Jul 15 1997 dev
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root other 512 Jul 18 1997 etc
drwxrwxrwx 11 ftp 20 4608 Nov 28 16:00 incoming
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 13 Jun 04 1998 ls-lR -> IAFA-LISTINGS
dr-xr-xr-x 17 root root 512 Jun 08 11:43 pub
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root other 512 Jul 15 1997 unc
dr-xr-xr-x 5 root other 512 Jul 15 1997 usr
226 Transfer complete.

If the ls command lists so many files that they scroll off the top of the screen, you can use Shift-PageUp to scroll up. This works in Linux console mode as well as in xterm or rxvt. On public FTP archives, the downloadable resources are usually held in the /pub directory. In this example, you already know that the kernel sources are in the directory /pub/Linux/kernel, so you type the following to get into that directory:

ftp> cd pub/Linux/kernel
250-README for kernel
250-
250-What you'll find here: kernel sources and patches
250-
250-
250 CWD command successful.

The messages you see, which begin with "250", are information messages sent by the server. In this case, the ftp server is configured to automatically send you the README file when you cd into the directory. Downloading and uploading files Now, after doing another ls, you see that you want to cd into the v2.2 directory. You do yet another ls, and find the file you want to download. It is linux-2.2.13.tar.gz. So you type this:

ftp> get linux-2.2.13.tar.gz
local: linux-2.2.13.tar.gz remote: linux-2.2.13.tar.gz
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for linux-2.2.13.tar.gz (15079540
bytes).

The ftp program has started saving the remote file linux-2.2.13.tar.gz
as the local file linux-2.2.13.tar.gz.

If you wanted to save it as the local file foo.tar.gz, you could have specified it like this:

ftp> get linux-2.2.13.tar.gz foo.tar.gz
local: foo.tar.gz remote: linux-2.2.13.tar.gz
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for linux-2.2.13.tar.gz (15079540
bytes).

If you want to download more than one file at a time, you'll have to use the mget (multiple get) command. You can use mget together with a space-delimited list of filenames you want to download, or you can use wildcards with the mget command. For example:

ftp> mget linux*

Would get all files starting with the string "linux". Normally, mget will prompt you for each file before it downloads it. You can toggle this by using the prompt command.

Now let's say you've written a piece of software, and you want to upload it to MetaLab to be included in their Linux software archive. First, you'd change to the /incoming directory (most public FTP servers have a directory, usually called incoming or uploads, where files can be uploaded), then you'd use the put command:

ftp> cd /incoming
ftp> put foo.tar.gz
local: foo.tar.gz remote: foo.tar.gz
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for foo.tar.gz.
226 Transfer complete.
10257 bytes sent in 0.00316 secs (3.2e+03 Kbytes/sec)

The put command works the same way as the get command, so you can use mput to upload multiple files at the same time. You can also upload a local file with a different filename on the server by specifying the remote filename and/or pathname as an argument.

What if the file foo.tar.gz is not in your current local directory when you try to upload it? You can switch local directories by using the lcd (local change directory) command:

ftp> lcd /home/foo/
Local directory now /home/foo

Running shell commands

The ftp client supports using the bang (!) to run local commands. For example, to get a listing of files in your current local directory, do this:

ftp> !ls

The way this works is that ftp calls the shell (specified in the $SHELL environment variable), and it is the shell which runs ls. Thus, you can run any command-line which works with your shell simply by prepending "!" to it (the default shell in most Linux distributions is bash, the Bourne Again SHell). Please note that !cd does not work as you would expect, this is why the lcd command exists.

Hash marks and tick

Wouldn't it be nice if you could watch the progress while you're downloading a file with ftp? You can use the hash command to print out hash marks as you download a file:

ftp> hash
Hash mark printing on (1024 bytes/hash mark).

As you can tell, ftp will print a hash mark for every 1024 bytes of data you download.

There is also a tick option.

ftp> tick
Tick counter printing on (10240 bytes/tick increment).

This will print something to this effect as you download a file:

Bytes transferred: 11680

Tips & Tricks... (Windows XP)
>>> Securing your WINDOWS XP computer >>>

You can provide added level of security to your WINDOWS XP System. This is called securing your Windows XP accounts database. You can store all information related to your accounts in a encrypted form on a floppy disk. What this would do is that if You do not have access to your floppy disk, You can not access the system. I am not sure You realized what I just said ! Even if You know your userid/password, You will not be able to access the system unless and until You have this startup disk.
Process of generating the this secure startup floppy disk is simple. Go to START-RUN and type syskey. You would see a window coming up. Click on Upgrade command button. You would see another window poping up which will give You the option of storing the encrypted accounts database either locally or on your floppy disk. Choose floppy disk and click OK and let the process complete. You are done.
Next time You reboot the computer and get to the logon prompt, make sure that You have the floppy disk available in A: drive else You can not log on.