Fragrant Memories

Setting Up Filezilla FTP Server In Windows 7

2012-01-05T21:40:00.000-10:00

The Windows operating system has built-in features that allow you to share documents, photos, music and video with other Windows users in the local network. However, users of Linux or another non-Windows OS may have a hard time trying to access shared resources on Windows computers. Setting up an FTP server on a Windows machine can solve such interoperability issues in sharing files between different types of computers.

FileZilla Server is a free, fast and powerful FTP server for Windows. By default, the FileZilla server starts automatically with Windows, and the admin port is 14147.

I don't like to see the admin interface started at every login.

You should define some ports for passive mode.

I like to enable TLS/SSL for added security in FTP transfers.

I created a group called users.

Then, I created a user for myself.

You should create a new rule for FileZilla in Windows Firewall.

In the new inbound rule wizard, select the following settings.

What type of rule would you like to create? Port
Does this rule apply to TCP or UDP? TCP
Does this rule apply to all local ports or specific local ports? 21, 990, 2100-2121
What action should be taken when a connection matches specific conditions? Allow the connection
Name: FTP connections

Open-Source Database Servers

2012-01-01T15:00:00.000-10:00

I've been thinking about installing an open-source database server for personal and commercial uses. My choices were limited as shown below.

Compiling MLDonkey for Windows

2011-12-26T18:37:00.003-10:00

MLDonkey is a nifty program that helps you share files with other people. MLDonkey works on Linux, but the Windows version I downloaded didn't work on my computer running Windows XP. So I compiled MLDonkey using Cygwin's mingw64-i686-gcc-* compiler toolchain. Here I show how I did it. Part of the information below is taken from the MLDonkey Windows guide.

Cygwin Setup
First, install Cygwin using the Cygwin installer(setup.exe). I set the Root directory to C:\Cygwin and chose to install the following packages in addition to base packages.
- bison
- gettext-devel
- libtool
- make
- mingw64-i686-binutils
- mingw64-i686-gcc-core
- mingw64-i686-gcc-fortran
- mingw64-i686-gcc-g++
- patch
- pkg-config

C:\Cygwin\etc\fstab

/usr/i686-w64-mingw32/sys-root/mingw /mingw none bind

Set the HOME variable.

Start the Cygwin terminal and type the following commands to set up Cygwin for Windows compilation.

cp /usr/bin/i686-w64-mingw32-g++.exe /usr/i686-w64-mingw32/bin/g++.exe
cp /usr/bin/i686-w64-mingw32-gcc.exe /usr/i686-w64-mingw32/bin/gcc.exe
cp /usr/bin/i686-w64-mingw32-cpp.exe /usr/i686-w64-mingw32/bin/cpp.exe
export PATH=/mingw/bin:/usr/i686-w64-mingw32/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/lib/gcc/i686-w64-mingw32/4.5.3
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/mingw/lib/pkgconfig

Compile zlib and bzip2
Download the zlib source (zlib-1.2.5.tar.gz) and unpack it.

tar xzvf zlib-1.2.5.tar.gz
cd zlib-1.2.5

Compile and install zlib.

make -f win32/Makefile.gcc
cp -iv zlib1.dll /mingw/bin
cp -iv zconf.h zlib.h /mingw/include
cp -iv libz.a /mingw/lib
cp -iv libzdll.a /mingw/lib/libz.dll.a

Now download bzip2 source from bzip2.org and unpack it.

tar xzvf bzip2-1.0.6.tar.gz
cd bzip2-1.0.6

Change line 78 of bzlib.h to read:

#if defined(_WIN32) && !defined(__MINGW32__)

Compile and install bzip2.

make
cp bzlib.h /mingw/include/
cp libbz2.a /mingw/lib

libiconv
Download and compile libiconv:

tar xzvf libiconv-1.14.tar.gz
cd libiconv-1.14
./configure --build=i686-pc-mingw32 --prefix=/mingw --enable-static
make
make install

JPEG, PNG & Freetype
Compile JPEG, libPNG and Freetype in the following way:
```
./configure --build=i686-pc-mingw32 --prefix=/mingw
make
make install
```

GD Graphics Library
Now get the libgd source, unpack and configure:

./configure --build=i686-pc-mingw32 --prefix=/mingw LIBS="-lbz2 -lws2_32 -liconv"

Once Makefile is generated, change line 233 to read:

DEFS = -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -DBGDWIN32

Also fix gd.h near line 25:

--- ./gd.h      Sat Oct 30 12:54:58 2004
+++ ./gd.h Sun Jan 05 17:56:09 2006
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@
 #endif /* WIN32 */

 #ifdef NONDLL
-#define BGD_DECLARE(rt) extern rt
+#define BGD_DECLARE(rt) extern rt _stdcall
 #else
 #ifdef BGDWIN32
 #define BGD_DECLARE(rt) __declspec(dllexport) rt __stdcall

Then, build and install gdlib:

make install

To create a DLL file called libgd-2.dll, run the following commands:

mkdir /tmp/gdlib
cd /tmp/gdlib
ar x /mingw/lib/libgd.a
gcc -shared -o /mingw/bin/libgd-2.dll -Wl,--out-implib,libgd.dll.a *.o -L/mingw/lib -lz -ljpeg -lpng -liconv -lfreetype

OCaml
You need flexdll (flexdll-0.27.zip) to build OCaml. Extract it to /mingw/bin. Then, download the latest OCaml source (3.12.1). Patch ocaml with this Unicode patch.

tar xzvf ocaml-3.12.1.tar.gz
cd ocaml-3.12.1
patch -p1 -l < ../ocaml-3.12.1-unicode.patch

In the config subfolder, copy Makefile.mingw to Makefile.

cp config/m-nt.h config/m.h 
cp config/s-nt.h config/s.h 
cp config/Makefile.mingw config/Makefile

Begin compiling OCaml.

make -f Makefile.nt world
make -f Makefile.nt opt
make -f Makefile.nt opt.opt
make -f Makefile.nt install

Set up OCaml environment variables:

export CAMLLIB=/mingw/lib
export OCAMLLIB=/mingw/lib
export CAMLP4LIB=/mingw/lib/camlp4

Build MLDonkey
Get the MLDonkey source, then unpack and configure it.
```
tar xjvf mldonkey-3.1.0.tar.bz2
cd mldonkey-3.1.0
./configure --build=i686-pc-mingw32 --prefix=/mingw --disable-fasttrack
```
To link with the static GD library, append -DNONDLL to the CPPFLAG line of config/Makefile.config
```
CPPFLAGS=-I/mingw/include -DNONDLL
```
Start compilation.
```
export OCAML_SRC=~/ocaml-3.12.1
cp -iv /mingw/lib/stublibs/dllunix.dll .
make depend
make mlnet.static 
strip mlnet.static 
mv mlnet.static mlnet.exe
```
If the final linking stage fails, here is the command I used to produce mlnet.exe:

g++ -g0 -O3 -o mlnet.exe -static -Wl,--subsystem,windows -Lbuild -L/mingw/lib /tmp/camlstartup.o build/flexdll_mingw.o /mingw/lib/std_exit.o src/daemon/common/commonMain.o build/driver.a build/core.a build/client.a build/common.a build/magic.a build/bitstring.a build/cdk.a build/extlib.a /mingw/lib/nums.a /mingw/lib/str.a /mingw/lib/unix.a /mingw/lib/bigarray.a /mingw/lib/stdlib.a src/utils/cdk/gdstubs.o src/networks/direct_connect/che3_c.o src/utils/lib/CryptoPP.o src/utils/lib/CryptoPP_stubs.o src/utils/net/upnp_stubs.o src/daemon/common/commonHasher_c.o src/utils/bitstring/bitstring_c.o src/utils/cdk/zlibstubs.o src/utils/cdk/heap_c.o src/config/mingw/os_stubs_c.o src/utils/lib/fst_hash.o src/utils/lib/md4_comp.o src/utils/lib/md4_c.o src/utils/lib/charsetstubs.o src/utils/lib/md5_c.o src/utils/lib/sha1_c.o src/utils/lib/tiger.o src/utils/lib/stubs_c.o -lnums -lcamlstr -lunix -lbigarray -lgdi32 -luser32 -ladvapi32 -limm32 -lshell32 -lole32 resfile.o -lpthread -lgd -ljpeg -lfreetype -lpng -lz -lbz2 -lws2_32 /mingw/lib/libasmrun.a /mingw/lib/libcharset.dll.a /mingw/lib/libiconv.dll.a
Optonally, compress the executable with upx.
```
upx --best --strip-relocs=0 mlnet.exe
```

mldonkey-3.1.0-win32.zip

MinGW: To build wget.exe

2011-12-20T19:26:00.001-10:00

wget is a useful command-line downloader. To build wget for the Windows platform, first install MinGW. Then, compile zlib, openssl and wget in that order. To compile zlib:

unzip zlib125.zip
cd zlib-1.2.5/ 
make -f win32/Makefile.gcc
cp -iv zlib1.dll /mingw/bin
cp -iv zconf.h zlib.h /mingw/include
cp -iv libz.a /mingw/lib
cp -iv libzdll.a /mingw/lib/libz.dll.a

To compile openssl:

./config --prefix=/mingw
make
make test
make install

Now, build wget

./configure --prefix=/mingw --enable-threads=win32 --disable-nls --with-ssl=openssl
make
make install

Compiling Zip and Unzip with MinGW

2011-10-17T19:30:00.002-10:00

The current version of zip supports higher compression with the bzip2 method. To build zip with bzip2 compression feature using MinGW, first prepare the bzip2 library:

tar xzvf bzip2-1.0.6.tar.gz
cd bzip2-1.0.6
make
cp bzlib.h /mingw/include/
cp libbz2.a /mingw/lib

Then, get the zip source and edit the makefile.gcc in the win32 folder. Find the CFLAGS line and append -DBZIP2_SUPPORT

CC=gcc
CFLAGS=-O2 -Wall -DWIN32 -DFORCE_WIN32_OVER_UNIX -DBZIP2_SUPPORT

Also, edit the LIBS line in the file makefile.gcc to link zip with bzip2 library

LIBS=-luser32 -ladvapi32 -lbz2

Compile zip.

make -f win32/makefile.gcc

You'll find zip.exe in the source folder.

Compiling Unzip with MinGW

Unzip is a command-line extraction tool for .zip archives. In order to be able to unpack bzipped .ZIP archive, I need to compile unzip with bzip2 support. After compiling bzip2 as above, I downloaded unzip60.tar.gz from Info-Zip project at Sourceforge and unpacked it.

tar xzvf unzip60.tar.gz
cd unzip60

I fixed the file win32/Makefile.gcc in the section following "# optional inclusion of bzip2 decompression"

INC_BZ2LIB = -I/mingw/include
LOCFLAGS = -I/mingw/include -DUSE_BZIP2
LD_BZ2LIB = -L/mingw/lib -lbz2
LIBBZIP2 = /mingw/lib/libbz2.a

Then, I compiled Unzip like this:

make -f win32/Makefile.gcc
ls -l *.exe

Three executables unzip.exe, unzipsfx.exe and funzip.exe are created. Copy them to a folder in your path or /bin.

cp -iv *.exe /C/Windows

Usage Examples

To back up a folder:

zip -Z bzip2 -S -r backup.zip *.*

Logging Into Linux Desktop with Xming, Xnest and Putty

2011-08-18T01:53:00.003-10:00

I use Xming and Putty to remotely log into my Linux desktop over a secure connection. Since I use xdm for the X11 login screen, I had to set up xdm for remote login. I made sure /etc/X11/xdm/xdm-config had this setting:

DisplayManager.requestPort: 117

I changed /etc/X11/xdm/Xaccess to allow any connection:

echo "*" > /etc/X11/xdm/Xaccess

I installed xnest on the Linux machine.

On Windows, install xming and X11 fonts. Start the Xming server.

Xming.exe :16 -clipboard -multiwindow -nolisten inet6

Then, start putty, enable X11 port forwarding and connect to the Linux box. Once you are logged into the remote terminal, start Xnest:

Xnest :16 -ac -geometry 960x720 -once -query 127.0.0.1

A window will pop up showing your lovely Linux destkop. Now, enjoy your Linux applications on Windows.

Cloud Storages for Linux

2011-04-03T15:20:00.004-10:00

Today the trend is to put your valuable data somewhere on the Internet and access it anywhere. This is a dramatic departure from the past as our trust grows towards Internet companies. More companies are offering cloud storage services, for example, Box.net and Zumodrive. Here I show how to set up Linux to access cloud storages.

Box.net offers 5GB of free online storage for personal use, but each upload must be smaller than 25MB. Zumodrive offers 2GB free space initially, but unlike box.net you can upload any size of files using the ZumoDrive desktop application.

Adding a Box.net folder in KDE Dolphin

Select Network from the Places panel. Then, double-click on Add Network Folder.
Choose the WebFolder (webdav) and click Next.
Enter information for Box.net as follows.

Setting up Zumodrive on Mint KDE edition

Download the Zumodrive package for Ubuntu 8 or later (zumodrive-ubuntu8-i386-0.989.deb).
The Zumodrive package depends on openjdk-6-jre, but Sun's JRE is installed in Mint, so you don't have to install openjdk-6-jre.
However, you need install libinotifytools0, libgnet2.0-0 and libnautilus-extention1. I used Synaptics to install the missing packages.

Unpack the zumodrive package into the system.

cd /
dpkg --extract zumodrive-ubuntu8-i386-0.989.deb .

Copy /usr/share/applications/zumodrive.desktop to your Desktop folder, so you can start Zumodrive by double-clicking the icon on desktop. Optionally, right-click on the icon, choose Properties and make it executable.

Now double-click on the Zumodrive icon. Once you type in your email and password, you can access Zumodrive through the ~/Zumodrive folder.

Hacker's Guide To Installing Windows 7

2011-03-23T13:05:00.005-10:00

Many people want to try the new Windows 7, but they're not too sure if Windows 7 is worth it. After all, it doesn't make sense to buy a new computer to try Windows 7 and then find out it's another lame bloatware. This guide will help an average joe to download, install and activate Windows 7 with freely available tools.

Hardware Requirements of Windows 7

First, you need to decide if your computer is capable of running Windows 7. According to Microsoft, Windows 7 has the following hardware requirements:

1 GHz or faster 32-bit or 64-bit processor
1 GB RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DVD-ROM drive or DVD burner
DirectX 9 graphics card with WDDM 1.0 or better driver

That means Windows 7 can run on most computers available. You may have to buy additional memory or a new video card to be able to run Windows 7. See the Windows 7 Compatibility site.

Next, decide which edition of Windows 7 you want to install on your computer. There are many editions of Windows 7, for example, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. For most people, Windows 7 Home Premium is good enough.

Windows 7 Direct Downloads and Bittorrents

It is recommended that you use aria2, Halogenware Retriever or Free Download Manager to download Windows 7 so you can resume a download in the event of connection problems. On the Web, you can download DVD images of Windows 7 from the following locations:

Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (x86 English) X17-24208.iso
MD5: c5bb99b2f1a9e7a5b4fbc6e3eff70882
SHA1: 22df3e5a80f8dbf014c2776a01b1cd9f24d83233
CRC32: 9c5dc931
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (x64 English) X17-24209.iso
MD5: 971843a457b6e0db0af61258cbe7256a
SHA1: b4821f46a171708f5f8f8a0ef48fc16529437961
CRC32: d236fd70
Windows 7 Professional SP1 (x86 English) X17-24280.iso
MD5: befd4f1e00ec8da2effbd789f4e66fbf
SHA1: 917a542b0541054bb9c2a06a11a46aed6943856b
CRC32: 20078d8d
Windows 7 Professional SP1 (x64 English) X17-24281.iso
MD5: 338f3245d68527db47b8a44e55317d0a
SHA1: 5ed2584110e03f498db4458ba9fafd5a7ef602ed
CRC32: 74f3cb73
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (x86 English) X17-24394.iso
CRC32: C2966895
MD5: 24F3A45D43D7C532AA3126CC094C61BD
SHA1 : 92c1ada4ff09c76ec2f1974940624cab7f822f62
SHA2: BBB5E0BAF3659F6DEC96B50381CBB05C09F066675EE639324B728215D5D47C43
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (x64 English) X17-24395.iso
CRC32: 8589EE18
MD5: 56A26636EC667799F5A7F42F142C772D
SHA1: 1693b6cb50b90d96fc3c04e4329604feba88cd51
SHA2: 9A2F3972FBBBB4974255CCCC26CDA9B1A75D9D0179867D6111162AC33F0CB693
Windows 7 Home Premium (x86 English) X15-65732.iso
SHA1: CC9D8220B2179E784D85BF1EA98D2EE2190D534F
ISO/CRC: 5DF6DBA0
Windows 7 Home Premium (x64 English) X15-65733.iso
SHA1: 336779EA6B65F63E11A609B4D021439C47AB315B
ISO/CRC: 56D954E4
Windows 7 Professional (x86 English) X15-65804.iso
SHA1: 697FA06554502FB21D30275273B25747299C020D
ISO/CRC: 578725D1
Windows 7 Professional (x64 English) X15-65805.iso
SHA1: 50127304441A793EE51B3F501289F6599A559E9F
ISO/CRC: 502C42C1
Windows-7-SP1-EN-MSDN-TechNet.torrent

I like using aria2 for download. Get my aria2 win32 build from here. To use aria2c to download Windows 7 Home Premium, open the Command Prompt and type the following command.

aria2c --file-allocation=prealloc http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65732/X15-65732.iso

To stop the download, press Ctrl+C twice. Later, you can resume download with the command:

aria2c -c http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65732/X15-65732.iso

After the download has finished, verify the checksums of the download with md5deep or HashCheck shell extension.

This is optional. If you want to create a single All-in-One DVD that can be used to install Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate edition, download and run eicfg_remover. This tool removes ei.cfg from the ISO file.

Then, burn the image to a blank DVD. You need to have a DVD burner and a blank DVD, of course. For free DVD-burning software, you can get ImgBurn, InfraRecorder or CDBurnerXP.

Compiling Linux Kernel 2.6.38

2011-03-02T21:29:00.005-10:00

Let's compile a Linux kernel. To build a kernel, I installed the following packages:

binutils
gcc-4.4
libglade2-dev for "make gconfig"
libqt3-mt-dev or libqt4-dev for "make xconfig"
make
module-init-tools
patch

libglade2-dev is needed to configure the kernel by running “make gconfig”. In addition, I am going to include the following features.

unionfs is a union filesystem that allows me to merge several filesystems into a single logical one. It has several uses, such as Live CD's and modifiable read-only filesystem.
ndiswrapper allows me to use many network devices by installing native Windows drivers.

I downloaded the kernel source and unpacked it.

tar xjvf linux-2.6.38.tar.bz2
cd linux-2.6.38

Then, I applied the unionfs patch.

gzip -dc ../unionfs-2.5.3_for_2.6.18.8.diff.gz | patch -p1 -l

Then, I configured the kernel with a GTK configuration tool.

cp /boot/config-2.6.31.5 .config
make gconfig

Open Makefile with an editor and define EXTRAVERSION if necessary.

Now let's compile the kernel.

make bzImage
make install
make modules
make modules_install
depmod -e -F /boot/System.map-2.6.38 -m 2.6.38

Set the default root device and ramdisk size for the new kernel.

cd /boot
rdev vmlinuz-2.6.38 1,0
ramsize vmlinuz-2.6.38 4096

Finally, compile ndiswrapper (Patches available here).

tar xzf ndiswrapper-1.55.tar.gz
cd ndiswrapper-1.55
KVERS=2.6.31.6 make uninstall
KVERS=2.6.31.6 make
KVERS=2.6.31.6 make install

Generate modules.* files.

depmod -e -m -F /boot/System.map-2.6.31.6 2.6.31.6

Building mplayer on Debian Linux

2011-01-02T11:02:00.003-10:00

MPlayer is one of my favorite media players. It is used with such frontend as smplayer, gnome-mplayer or MPlayerGUI to provide a good alternative to Windows Media Player and VLC. First, I installed the necessary compiler toolchain.

autoconf
automake
binutils
bison
cpp
g77 or fort77
gcc
gettext
g++
libtool
make

Next, I installed the necessary development libraries:

libasound2-dev
libbz2-dev
libesd0-dev
libfontconfig1-dev
libfribidi-dev
libjpeg62-dev
libncurses5-dev
libpng12-dev
libxv-dev

Some useful libraries are not included in the Debian distribution, so I had to compile them on my own. They are faac, lame, libdca, live, x264 and xvidcore. First, I built liblzo.

tar xzvf /usr/src/lzo-2.04.tar.gz
cd lzo-2.04/
./configure --prefix /usr
make
make install

Then, I built the giflib.

tar xjvf /usr/src/giflib-4.1.6.tar.bz2
cd giflib-4.1.6/
ls
./configure --build=i586-pc-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --disable-shared
make
make install

I built cdparanoia.

tar xzvf /usr/src/cdparanoia-III-10.2.src.tgz
cd cdparanoia-III-10.2/
./configure --build=i586-pc-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --disable-shared
make
make install

I compiled libdca in the following way:

tar xjvf libdca-0.0.5.tar.bz2
cd libdca-0.0.5/
./configure --build=i586-pc-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --disable-shared
make
make install

I built ogg, vorbis, theora and speex.

./configure --build=i586-pc-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --disable-shared
make
make install

To compile lame, run:

tar xzvf /usr/src/lame-3.98.4.tar.gz
cd lame-3.98.4/
./configure --build=i586-pc-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --disable-shared --mandir=/usr/share/man --enable-expopt=full --enable-nasm
make
make install

Unpack live555 source in /usr/lib and compile live555 as follows:

cd /usr/lib/live
./genMakefiles linux
make

To compile x264, do:

tar xjvf /usr/src/x264-snapshot-20110102-2245.tar.bz2
cd x264-snapshot-20110102-2245/
sh configure --host=i586-pc-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --enable-pic --disable-asm
make
make install

Compile the xvid library as follows:

cd xvidcore/build/generic
./configure --build=i586-pc-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr
make
make install

Finally, you're ready to compile MPlayer. Get the latest snapshot tarball and extract it:

wget ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/mplayer-export-snapshot.tar.bz2
tar xjvf mplayer-export-snapshot.tar.bz2
cd mplayer-export-2009-05-29
CPPFLAGS='-DLIBTWOLAME_STATIC' ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-runtime-cpudetection --yasm=/usr/bin/yasm --language=all --confdir=/etc/mplayer
make
make install
chmod 4755 /usr/bin/mplayer

ssh + netcat + tar + xz = Secure Network Transfer Link

2010-12-29T13:19:00.003-10:00

I found a way to use simple command-line tools to transfer files between computers far apart. Using this method, I was able to duplicate the contents of an entire filesystem securely over a SSH tunnel between two computers. In this method, no NFS server or scp command is needed. However, netcat plays an important role in this method. Let's first make sure we have everything ready.

OpenSSH
netcat
tar or cpio
xz, lzma, lzo, bzip2 or gzip

I'll be really brief.

At the computer where you will receive files (say, 192.168.1.2), type the following commands to start netcat in listening mode and use tar + xz to unpack the incoming stream of data.
```
cd /my/downdoad/folder
nc -l 7749 | xz -dc | tar xvf -
```
At the computer where you will send files (say, 192.168.1.1), create a ssh tunnel to the computer receiving files (192.168.1.2).
```
ssh -l username -L 5525:192.168.1.2:7749 192.168.1.2
```
Open another terminal window and type the following command to start sending files.
```
tar cvf - . | xz -c | nc 127.0.0.1 5525
```

Partition Imaging with Netcat

Backing up hard drive partitions over the network can be accomplished with just a few simple tools like netcat. This is another handy usage of netcat. At the receiving computer where you'll store the backup, type the command to receive the partition image:

nc -l 7749 | lzma -dc | dd of=/dev/sda8 bs=640K

At the sending computer from which you'll transmit the partition, establish an SSH link first:

ssh -l username -L 5525:192.168.1.2:7749 192.168.1.2

Then compress the partition data and transmit over the secure SSH channel:

dd if=/dev/sda11 bs=640K | lzma -9c | nc 127.0.0.1 5525

Note that the transfer may take many hours for a large partition.

Transmission-Daemon for Windows

2010-11-14T12:43:00.003-10:00

Here are my Windows builds of transmission-daemon. I built it with Cygwin's GCC compiler. 7-zip or a newest version of unzip should be used to unpack them.

The package contains the following files:

Cygwin1.dll
Cygwin Unix layer
transmission-cli.exe
Command-line Bittorrent Client
transmission-create.exe
Create .torrent files
transmission-daemon.exe
Transmission server
transmission-edit.exe
Edit .torrent files
transmission-remote.exe
Control the transmission daemon
transmission-show.exe
Show .torrent contents

Unpack the package into a folder, for example, C:\Program Files\Transmission. Then, create a shortcut with the following command:

transmission-daemon -b -o -m -ep -a 127.0.0.1,192.168.*.* --utp

Double-clicking the shortcut will not open any window. However, transmission-daemon is silently running in the background. You can control the daemon with any Web browser by opening this local Web address:

http://127.0.0.1:9091/

Although you can control transmission-daemon with a Web browser, it's not a pretty thing to do so. I recommend using transmission-remote-dotnet or transmission-remote-gui. The following is a screenshot for Transmission Remote .NET which is written in C#.

And, below you can see Transmission Remote GUI that's written in Pascal.

The settings for the daemon are stored in the ~/.config/transmission-daemon folder. Make sure the HOME environment variable points correctly to your folder.

To Build Transmission-Daemon for Windows

First, install Cygwin using the Cygwin installer(setup.exe). I set the Root directory to C:\Cygwin and chose to install the following packages in addition to base packages.

bison
gettext-devel
libtool
make
binutils
gcc4-core
gcc4-fortran
gcc4-g++
patch
pkg-config

Compile zlib.

./configure --prefix=/usr --static
make
cp -iv zconf.h zlib.h /usr/include
cp -iv libz.a /usr/lib

Build OpenSSL.

./Configure -DHAVE_STRUCT_TIMESPEC -lz -lpthread --prefix=/usr pthread zlib cygwin
make
make install

Build CURL.

./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-shared
make
make install

Compile libevent.

./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-shared
make 
make install

Lastly, build transmission.

./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-shared --enable-static --disable-nls --without-gtk CPPFLAGS=-DHAVE_STRUCT_TIMESPEC
make
make install

If you get snprintf error with libutp, insert the following line into utp.cpp:

extern int snprintf(char *, size_t, const char *, ...);

Debian Linux: Simple steps to recover files from /lost+found

2010-08-21T08:44:00.002-10:00

cd /var/lib/dpkg/info
cat *.md5sums | sort -k 2 > /tmp/all.md5

cd /lost+found
md5sum * | sort > /tmp/lost.md5

awk '{print $1} /tmp/lost.md5 > /tmp/0.txt

for f in $(cat /tmp/0.txt); do grep $f all.md5 >> /tmp/1.txt; done

awk '{print $2}' /tmp/lost.md5 > /tmp/2.txt

cd /
for $f in $(cat /tmp/2.txt); do MD5=$(grep $f /dev/shm/lost.md5 | awk '{print $1}'); ORIGIN=$(grep $MD5 /tmp/1.txt | awk '{print $2}'); mv /lost+found/$f /$ORIGIN; done

Tweaking Lenovo IdeaPad S12

2010-08-09T01:33:00.006-10:00

I bought Lenovo IdeaPad S12 for $400. This little laptop has 12.1" display, VIA Nano processor, 1GB memory and 160GB hard drive. It's shipped with Windows XP, but I want to install Windows 7 alongside XP, so as to have a dual-boot system.

Shrinking the Recovery Partition

I booted IdeaPad S12 with my own Linux Live CD. In Xterm, I typed the following command:

fdisk -l -u /dev/sda

I got the following output.

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xee8a96be

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048   217909247   108953600    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2       217909248   281638911    31864832    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3       281638912   312581807    15471448   12  Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda5       217911296   281638911    31863808    7  HPFS/NTFS

The last primary partition /dev/sda3 seems to be Lenovo's recovery partition. I was able to boot the recovery partition with the following GRUB commands:

root (hd0,2)
chainloader +1
boot

Once I boot into Lenovo's OneKey Recovery System, I can use OneKey AntiVirus to scan the laptop for virus or use OneKey Recovery to restore the laptop to the factory state. I rebooted the laptop with my Linux Live CD. Then, I used GParted to shrink /dev/sda3 and changed its partition number to /dev/sda4:

Shrink /dev/sda3 to 6 GB.
Duplicate /dev/sda3 to a new primary partition /dev/sda4.
Remove the partition /dev/sda3.
Change the type of the new partition /dev/sda4 to 12.

After that, my partition layout looks like this:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xee8a96be

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048   217909247   108953600    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2       217909248   281638911    31864832    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4       299997810   312576704     6289447+  12  Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda5       217911296   281638911    31863808    7  HPFS/NTFS

I restarted my laptop. I was able to boot Lenovo's OneKey Recovery System using the following GRUB commands.

root (hd0,3)
chainloader +1
boot

Moving Lenovo's pre-installed Windows XP to a logical partition

To reserve primary partitions for other crucial operating systems, I moved the Windows XP partition to the extended partition. This technique is explained in this post. Roughly speaking:

Shrink the Windows XP partition (/dev/sda1) by half using GParted. Space is created between /dev/sda1 (Windows XP, type 7) and /dev/sda2 (extended, type f).
Enlarge the extended partition (/dev/sda2) to the left. A space is created at the beginning of the extended partition.
Make a copy of Windows XP partition in the space of the extended partition. The new partition will become /dev/sda6.
Fix the partition numbers with fdisk (switching partition numbers of /dev/sda6 and /dev/sda5). Previously, /dev/sda6 came before /dev/sda5.
Fix BOOT.INI of the new XP partition (/dev/sda5).
Boot the new XP partition (/dev/sda5) in safe mode using GRUB or SYSLINUX. Change drive letters in the registry.
Reboot Windows XP (/dev/sda5) normally and remove the old partition (/dev/sda1).

Starting Windows XP with SYSLINUX

Recently, I switched to SYSLINUX. I created a 100MB primary partition (/dev/sda1) formatted with FAT16. Then, in Linux, I installed SYSLINUX.

syslinux /dev/sda1

A new MBR had to be installed, too.

install-mbr /dev/sda -v --drive 0x80 --enable +14

I copied chain.c32 from the SYSLINUX package to the SYSLINUX partition (/dev/sda1). Then, I copied NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI to the SYSLINUX partition (/dev/sda1), too.

I created a text file named SYSLINUX.CFG with the following instruction.

TIMEOUT 30
DEFAULT chain.c32 ntldr=NTLDR

This will let you boot Windows XP in a logical partition.

Installing Programs on Windows XP

I removed the following programs from factory-installed Windows XP of Lenovo S12:

Symantec Norton Internet Security
Diskeeper
Veriface

Then, I installed the following software:

Avast Anti-virus
MyDefrag

Installing Windows 7 Home Premium

I created a new NTFS partition (/dev/sda2) using GParted. I set its bootable flag and hid all other FAT and NTFS partitions. Then, I installed Windows 7 Home Premium.

After that, I moved the Windows 7 partition into the extended partition as /dev/sda6. Then, I removed the original partition (/dev/sda2). I rebooted with Windows 7 installation DVD, clicked the Repair option and opened the Command Prompt. I typed the following commands to make the new Windows 7 partition bootable.

C:
bcdedit /store C:\Boot\BCD /enum
bcdedit /store C:\Boot\BCD /set {bootmgr} device partition=C:
bcdedit /store C:\Boot\BCD /set {default} device partition=C:
bcdedit /store C:\Boot\BCD /set {default} osdevice partition=C:

Then, I added the following entry to SYSLINUX.CFG.

LABEL win7
KERNEL chain.c32
APPEND hd0 6

To make sure that SYSLINUX can boot Windows 7, I typed the following command at the boot: prompt.

chain.c32 hd0 6

Now I am able to boot Windows 7 from a logical partition.

Booting Windows 7 with Software SLIC emulation

There are many ways to emulate SLIC so that Windows 7 can be activated. In my case, I've set up a boot sequence like this.

MBR -> SYSLINUX -> GRUB -> Windows 7

GRUB was patched for the loadslic command which is crucial for Windows activation. The SYSLINUX command to invoke GRUB is like this.

chain.c32 grub=stage2 grubcfg=(hd0,0)/win7.cfg

Then, I created a file WIN7.CFG with the following contents.

hiddenmenu
timeout 0
default 0

title Windows 7 Home Premium
loadslic (hd0,0)/lenovocb-01.bin
chainloader (hd0,5)+1

Checking Integrity of A Debian/Ubuntu System

2010-07-28T17:41:00.003-10:00

Sometimes, a Linux filesystem becomes corrupted, system files are damaged, or some crucial files get lost. This often happens, regardless of which filesystem (ext2, ext3, ext4, jfs, reiserfs, reiser4, or xfs) is used. There are many possible reasons, such as:

Unstable hardware, for example, memory or hard drive problem
Overheat, power surge, quake or another environmental disaster
Buggy software, such as a bug in the kernel or the filesystem driver
Compromised security, for example, network intrusion or attack
Worm or virus infection

Files in Linux systems can be categorized into the following three:

Verifiable System Files
In Linux systems that are managed by packages (such as Debian and Ubuntu), these files are installed by packages and make up the bulk of the filesystem. These files reside in such directories as /bin, /lib, /sbin and /usr. They are usually static, which means they don't normally change except when the system is updated, or locally compiled binaries are installed.
Changeable System Files
These files are auxiliary system files for system configuration, initialization or customization, and system data (such as logs and cache). They reside in /boot, /etc, /opt, /srv and /var.
User Data
These files are created and used by superuser (a.k.a root) and normal users, or software-generated during casual user activities. Typically, they are in /home, /media, /mnt and /root.

This post focuses on verifiable system files (installed by packages). When the filesystem becomes corrupted (but not completely unreadable), it is possible to verify and restore the system integrity by using package checksums. Before you continue, make sure to fsck the filesystem.

e2fsck -r -v /dev/sda7

In this example, /dev/sda7 points to an ext2 partition we're going to check. Be aware that you cannot fsck a mounted filesystem. Therefore, boot with a Debian Live CD (or a Ubuntu CD) and run fsck. After you've performed fsck, there may be some files created in the /lost+found directory. We'll deal with them later. First, mount the filesystem.

mount -t ext2 /dev/sda7 /mnt

Go to /var/lib/dpkg/info. Then, concatenate all the md5sums files. Most, if not all, Debian and Ubuntu packages come with a md5sum file that we can use to check the integrity of the package and the files installed by the package.

cd /var/lib/dpkg/info
cat *.md5sums | sort > /dev/shm/all.md5

all.md5 has md5 checksums of all the files installed on the system. Now, check the files on the Debian/Ubuntu system against the concatenated md5sums file.

cd /
md5sum -c /dev/shm/all.md5 > /dev/shm/check.txt 2>&1

/dev/shm/check.txt now contains the results of the integrity check. It looks like this:

bin/bash: OK
bin/bunzip2: OK
bin/bzcat: FAILED

In this example, /bin/bzcat is damaged. To find all the missing or damaged files, use a command like this one:

grep -v ': OK$' /dev/shm/check.txt

Let's reinstall this file. First, find out which package this file belongs to.

dpkg -S /bin/bzcat

We'll see the following result.

bzip2: /bin/bzcat

Now we know that we need to reinstall bzip2. Let's download the package.

dpkg -p bzip2 | grep 'Filename: '

This command will let us know the name of the package to download. Use wget to download it.

wget ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/b/bzip2/bzip2_1.0.5-4_i386.deb

You can just reinstall the package.

dpkg -i bzip2_1.0.5-4_i386.deb

Or, you can just extract one file:

dpkg --fsys-tarfile bzip2_1.0.5-4_i386.deb | tar xf - ./bin/bzcat

Alternatively,

dpkg --fsys-tarfile bzip2_1.0.5-4_i386.deb | tar xOf - ./bin/bzcat > /mnt/bin/bzcat

To restore a file from the /lost+found directory, you can also use the MD5SUMS file. First, run md5sum on files in /lost+found.

cd /lost+found
md5sum *

You may get an output like this.

9aaa2176d20c1b1203e3abbac55a2513  #124531

To find out what #124531 file is originally, find its md5 checksum from the all.md5 file above.

grep 9aaa /dev/shm/all.md5

You'll get a result like this.

9aaa2176d20c1b1203e3abbac55a2513  bin/bzip2

Now you can just move it to its place.

mv \#124531 /mnt/bin/bzip2

After you restore all damaged files and restore files from /lost+found, you can find missing files in the system. Go to /var/lib/dpkg/info again and concatenate all the list files.

cd /var/lib/dpkg/info
cat *.list | sort | uniq > /dev/shm/all.txt

The .list files in the /var/lib/dpkg/info directore show the list of files installed by packages. Let's find what's missing from the system.

cd /
for f in $(cat /dev/shm/all.txt ); do test -e "$f" || echo "$f" >> /dev/shm/nonexist.txt ; done

The file /dev/shm/nonexist.txt will show which files are missing from the system. You can then replace the missing files as done previously.

Linux: Using dd To Back Up Hard Drive Partitions

2010-07-26T14:19:00.002-10:00

I am going to use the omnipresent and omnipotent tool called dd to back up a hard drive partition. I am working with the drive /dev/sdb. First, I save a text file that has information on the partition table layout.

fdisk -l /dev/sdb > hdpt.txt
fdisk -l -u /dev/sdb >> hdpt.txt

Then, I choose the compression format to use for the backup archive.

gzip
bzip2
lzma
xz

My choice for the compression format is lzma which provides superior compression and faster decompression. The following command backs up a partition at /dev/sdb1 with dd and lzma.

dd if=/dev/sdb1 | lzma -9c > backup01.bin.lzma

To restore this backup later, use the following command:

lzcat backup01.bin.lzma | dd of=/dev/sdb1

Linux Commands To Partition and Format a Drive

2010-07-22T18:41:00.004-10:00

Partitioning

In addition to the wonderful gparted, we can also use fdisk to partition a disk:

fdisk /dev/sdb

The device names for hard disks and USB drives are typically /dev/sd?, for example, /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, etc. For Linux kernels 2.6.18 or older, IDE hard drives may be called /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, etc.

Formatting

To format a FAT16 partition:

mkdosfs -F 16 -n LABEL -r 512 -v /dev/sdb1

To format EXT2 partition:

mke2fs -L SID -v /dev/sdb2

To format a JFS partition:

jfs_mkfs -c -L Debian_Sid /dev/sdb2

Installing MBR

MBR is a boot code necessary for booting from the hard drive or USB flash.

install-mbr /dev/sdb -v --drive 0x80 --enable +12

Installing bootloaders

For SYSLINUX:

syslinux /dev/sdb1

Checking Filesystem Integrity

For FAT16/FAT32:

dosfsck -r -v -V /dev/sdb1

List of Useful Software for Windows

2010-07-10T20:01:00.012-10:00

I just finished setting up my laptop. It's got Windows 7 Home Premium installed. The following is a list of software I installed onto my laptop:

7-Zip or PeaZip
Allows you to extract files from ZIP and RAR archives.
Adobe Digital Editions
An ebook reader
Adobe Reader 9.0
Aria2 command-line downloader
avast! Antivirus Home or ClamWin
Barnes and Noble eReader
Calibre e-book manager
CDBurnerXP, ImgBurn or InfraRecorder
Free utility for burning CD's and DVD's
Code::Blocks
Free Integrated Development Environment for software programming
Dia diagram editor
Impact Color Fax
eMule or aMule
With *Mule client, you download files from eDonkey/Kademlia file-sharing network.
FileZilla Server and FTP Client
Free FTP server and client
FlashPlayer
FoxyTunes for Firefox
Allows you to control music while surfing the Internet
GIMP
Helps you draw pictures and edit photographs.
GnuCash
Free accounting software
GnuPlot
plotting and graphing software
Haansoft Hangul 2007
Korean wordprocessor. More information is available here.
Halogenware Retriever
Download utility
HashCheck Shell Extension or md5deep
A tool for calculating hash values of a file to verify its integrity
IBM Lotus Symphony
Free office productivity software
Impact ColorFax Lite
Sends and receives fax.
IfoEdit
Allows you to edit DVD IFO files.
ImgBurn
a lightweight CD / DVD / HD-DVD / Blu-ray burning application
Inkscape
Lets you create and edit vector graphics.
IsoBuster
Allows you to retrieve data from ISO files.
iTunes
Java
JetAudio
music player
jEdit
Programmer's editor
Maxima computer algebra system
Microsoft Office 2010
Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Maxthon
Popular and powerful web browser
MyDefrag
FreeWare hard disk defragmenter
OpenOffice.org 3.1
Free powerful office productivity software
OpenType Font Properties Extension 2.30
PChat
Lets you chat with friends on IRC networks.
PDFCreator
Pidgin
Multi-protocol instant messaging software
RealPlayer
Sancho is a graphical frontend to mldonkey p2p daemon.
Scribus
Open-source desktop publishing software
Sigil ePub editor
Skype
SMplayer
Free movie player based on mplayer
Songbird music player
TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress
Helps you to create and convert MPEG files.
Transmission-Remote-Dotnet or Transmission-Remote-GUI
Allows you to download files from bittorrent networks. Needs transmission Cygwin port.
Unikey
Helps you type Vietnamese.
VirtuaWin
A virtual desktop manager.
VLC media player
Windows Live Essentials
Windows Messenger and Windows Live Mail
WinImage
Allows you to create and extract floppy and CD images.
wxHexeditor
XnView
Software for viewing images and pictures
XVid codec
Yahoo! Messenger 9
Yahoo! Toolbar
Yahoo! Widgets
Similar to Windows sidebar, displays useful information along the side of screen
Zimbra Desktop
Allows you to read and compose email offline.
Zoom Player
Zumodrive
Network storage service

Install Windows XP on a USB flash/hard drive

2010-06-30T02:06:00.042-10:00

I am building a new PC from old spare parts. The new PC will be used mainly for the Internet, so a hard drive won't be necessary unless there's a need to download music and movies. I'm going to put together a computer with no internal storage, but use a USB stick as the main storage. Windows XP Professional will be installed on the USB stick, and the computer will boot up from the USB stick. Here I show how to install XP onto a USB stick and boot the PC from it. You should have the following ready.

PC running Windows for carrying out the task
USB flash/hard drive with at least 1.5 GB capacity
genuine Windows XP CD
- bittorrent: Windows XP Pro SP3 VL MSDN
- ed2k: en_windows_xp_professional_with_service_pack_3_x86_cd_vl_x14-73974.iso
cabarc.exe from Windows XP Service Pack 2 Support Tools
ImgBurn, CDBurnerXP or similar tool
PowerQuest Partition Table Editor
HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.2.3

Let's begin.

Get your Windows XP installation CD and copy its contents to an empty folder on the hard drive. If you don't have the CD, use utorrent or emule to download the ISO file.
- bittorrent: Windows XP Pro SP3 VL MSDN
- ed2k: en_windows_xp_professional_with_service_pack_3_x86_cd_vl_x14-73974.iso
Then, use 7-zip to extract the contents of the ISO file into an empty folder.
Start the Command Prompt, go to the I386 subfolder and type the following commands to uncompress the USB driver files:
```
CD I386
EXPAND -I USB.IN_
EXPAND -I USBPORT.IN_
EXPAND -I USBSTOR.IN_
```
We'll get 3 new files: USB.INF, USBPORT.INF and USBSTOR.INF. Remove the original .IN_ files.
```
ERASE USB.IN_ USBPORT.IN_ USBSTOR.IN_
```

Edit TXTSETUP.SIF to include USB storage support at the initial stage of Windows XP installation. The highlighted entries were copied from the [InputDevicesSupport.Load] section to the [BootBusExtenders.Load] section:

[BootBusExtenders.Load]
pci = pci.sys
acpi = acpi.sys
isapnp = isapnp.sys
acpiec = acpiec.sys
ohci1394 = ohci1394.sys
usbehci = usbehci.sys
usbohci = usbohci.sys
usbuhci = usbuhci.sys
usbhub = usbhub.sys
usbstor = usbstor.sys

Likewise for [BootBusExtenders] and [InputDevicesSupport]:

[BootBusExtenders]
pci      = "PCI Bus Driver",files.pci,pci
acpi     = "ACPI Plug & Play Bus Driver",files.acpi,acpi
isapnp   = "ISA Plug & Play Bus Driver",files.isapnp,isapnp
acpiec   = "ACPI Embedded Controller Driver",files.none,acpiec
ohci1394 = "IEEE 1394 Bus OHCI Compliant Port Driver",files.ohci1394,ohci1394
usbehci  = "Enhanced Host Controller",files.usbehci,usbehci
usbohci  = "Open Host Controller",files.usbohci,usbohci
usbuhci  = "Universal Host Controller",files.usbuhci,usbuhci
usbhub   = "Generic USB Hub Driver",files.usbhub,usbhub
usbstor  = "USB Storage Class Driver",files.usbstor,usbstor

Insert the following in the [HiveInfs.Fresh] section:

[HiveInfs.Fresh]
AddReg = hivedef.inf,AddReg
AddReg = hivesys.inf,AddReg
AddReg = hivesft.inf,AddReg
AddReg = hivecls.inf,AddReg
AddReg = hiveusd.inf,AddReg
AddReg = dmreg.inf,DM.AddReg
AddReg = usbboot.inf,usbservices

Then, in the [SourceDisksFiles] section:

[SourceDisksFiles]
usbboot.inf = 1,,,,,,_x,3,,3
bootvid.dll = 1,,,,,,3_,2,0,0,,1,2
kdcom.dll = 1,,,,,,3_,2,0,0,,1,2

Save and close TXTSETUP.SIF.

Edit DOSNET.INF so that the second [Files] section looks like this:

[Files]
d1,usbboot.inf
d1,_default.pif
d1,12520437.cpx
d1,12520850.cpx

Edit USB.INF as follows:

[StandardHub.AddService]
DisplayName = %StandardHub.SvcDesc%
ServiceType = 1 ; SERVICE_KERNEL_DRIVER
StartType = 0 ; SERVICE_DEMAND_START
ErrorControl = 1 ; SERVICE_ERROR_NORMAL
ServiceBinary = %12%\usbhub.sys
LoadOrderGroup = Boot Bus Extender

[CommonClassParent.AddService]
DisplayName = %GenericParent.SvcDesc%
ServiceType = 1 ; SERVICE_KERNEL_DRIVER
StartType = 0 ; SERVICE_DEMAND_START
ErrorControl = 1 ; SERVICE_ERROR_NORMAL
ServiceBinary = %12%\usbccgp.sys
LoadOrderGroup = Boot Bus Extender

Modify USBPORT.INF like this.

[EHCI.AddService]
DisplayName = %EHCIMP.SvcDesc%
ServiceType = 1 ; SERVICE_KERNEL_DRIVER
StartType = 0 ; SERVICE_DEMAND_START
ErrorControl = 1 ; SERVICE_ERROR_NORMAL
ServiceBinary = %12%\usbehci.sys
LoadOrderGroup = Boot Bus Extender


[OHCI.AddService]
DisplayName = %OHCIMP.SvcDesc%
ServiceType = 1 ; SERVICE_KERNEL_DRIVER
StartType = 0 ; SERVICE_DEMAND_START
ErrorControl = 1 ; SERVICE_ERROR_NORMAL
ServiceBinary = %12%\usbohci.sys
LoadOrderGroup = Boot Bus Extender


[UHCI.AddService]
DisplayName = %UHCIMP.SvcDesc%
ServiceType = 1 ; SERVICE_KERNEL_DRIVER
StartType = 0 ; SERVICE_DEMAND_START
ErrorControl = 1 ; SERVICE_ERROR_NORMAL
ServiceBinary = %12%\usbuhci.sys
LoadOrderGroup = Boot Bus Extender


[ROOTHUB.AddService]
DisplayName = %ROOTHUB.SvcDesc%
ServiceType = 1 ; SERVICE_KERNEL_DRIVER
StartType = 0 ; SERVICE_DEMAND_START
ErrorControl = 1 ; SERVICE_ERROR_NORMAL
ServiceBinary = %12%\usbhub.sys
LoadOrderGroup = Boot Bus Extender

Edit USBSTOR.INF:

[USBSTOR.AddService]
DisplayName = %USBSTOR.SvcDesc%
ServiceType = 1
StartType = 0
Tag = 3
ErrorControl = 1
ServiceBinary = %12%\USBSTOR.SYS
LoadOrderGroup = Boot Bus Extender

Create a new file USBBOOT.INF with the following contents:

[usbservices]

HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR","DisplayName",0x00000000,"USB Mass Storage Driver"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR","ErrorControl",0x00010001,1
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR","Group",0x00000000,"System Reserved"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR","ImagePath",0x00020000,"system32\DRIVERS\USBSTOR.SYS"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR","Start",0x00010001,0
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR","Type",0x00010001,1

HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbehci","DisplayName",0x00000000,"USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller Miniport Driver"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbehci","ErrorControl",0x00010001,1
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbehci","Group",0x00000000,"System Reserved"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbehci","ImagePath",0x00020000,"system32\DRIVERS\usbehci.sys"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbehci","Start",0x00010001,0
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbehci","Type",0x00010001,1

HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbhub","DisplayName",0x00000000,"USB2 Enabled Hub"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbhub","ErrorControl",0x00010001,1
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbhub","Group",0x00000000,"System Reserved"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbhub","ImagePath",0x00020000,"system32\DRIVERS\usbhub.sys"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbhub","Start",0x00010001,0
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbhub","Type",0x00010001,1

HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbuhci","DisplayName",0x00000000,"Microsoft USB Universal Host Controller Miniport Driver"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbuhci","ErrorControl",0x00010001,1
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbuhci","Group",0x00000000,"System Reserved"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbuhci","ImagePath",0x00020000,"system32\DRIVERS\usbuhci.sys"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbuhci","Start",0x00010001,0
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbuhci","Type",0x00010001,1

HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbohci","DisplayName",0x00000000,"Microsoft USB Open Host Controller Miniport Driver"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbohci","ErrorControl",0x00010001,1
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbohci","Group",0x00000000,"System Reserved"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbohci","ImagePath",0x00020000,"system32\DRIVERS\usbohci.sys"
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbohci","Start",0x00010001,0
HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usbohci","Type",0x00010001,1

If you haven't erased the original .IN_ files, do so now.
```
erase USB.IN_
erase USBPORT.IN_
erase USBSTOR.IN_
```
Compress the modified files with cabarc.
```
cabarc n USB.IN_ usb.inf
cabarc n USBPORT.IN_ usbport.inf
cabarc n USBSTOR.IN_ usbstor.inf
```
You'll get 3 compressed files with IN_ extension.
Put these files back into the I386 subfolder of the Windows XP installation folder.
- DOSNET.INF
- TXTSETUP.SIF
- USB.IN_
- USBBOOT.INF
- USBPORT.IN_
- USBSTOR.IN_
You'll need this boot sector (w2ksect.bin) to make your new CD bootable. Put w2ksect.bin inside the main folder containing XP files.
Now, let's burn a new CD containing Windows XP files. Start ImgBurn and select Write files/folders to disc. Click the Browser for a folder... icon and select the folder containing Windows XP files. Then, set up options as follows.

Insert a blank CD into your optical drive and burn it.
Plug in your USB flash drive or USB hard drive to your computer and run the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. On Windows Vista or Windows 7, run it as administrator.

From the I386 folder of XP installation CD, copy the following files to the USB drive:

ntldr
ntdetect.com

Then, create a new file boot.ini with the following contents. Put it on the USB drive.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

Run the Partition Table Editor (PTEDIT32.EXE) as administrator. Select your USB drive from Hard Disk pulldown menu.

Change the type of primary partition on the USB drive from 00 to 80. Click the Save Changes button.

Partition Information should read FAT16X, Bootable
Remove your hard drive from the computer. Then, connect your USB flash drive directly to your computer.
Change the boot order in the BIOS so that your computer can boot from a USB drive. Typical BIOS options are as follows:
- USB HDD
- USB Hard Drive
Insert your new Windows XP CD your burned above and boot your computer with it. During installation, don't format the USB drive. Just leave it as is.
After successfully installing Windows XP on your USB drive, install the EWF or FBWF filter.

Dumping the Contents of a Data CD into an ISO file

2010-06-29T21:21:00.000-10:00

ISO files are used to burn Data CD's. If you want to share software CD's with someone far away, you can dump the contents of the CD into an ISO file and then transfer the ISO file to him.

For this job, readom from the cdrkit package can do. If you use Windows, download cygwin1.dll and readom.exe, then put them in C:\Windows and start the Command Prompt. Put the Windows XP CD in your CD-ROM (Assume CD-ROM's drive letter is D:) and run the following commands:

readom dev='D:' f='/home/Public/Downloads/dumped.iso' speed=2 retries=8 -noerror -nocorr

Assuming we're using Windows Vista or Windows 7, we'll find the dumped ISO file at C:\Users\Public\Downloads\dumped.iso.

Alternatively, we can use WinImage to dump the CD contents. From the Disk menu of WinImage, make sure “use CD-ROM D:” is checked. Then, select “Create CD-ROM ISO image...” from the Disk menu. If you get an access error, close any Windows Explorer, Media Player or file manager.

We can also use CDBurnerXP, InfraRecorder or ImgBurn to dump the CD contents to an ISO file.

Compiling GTK+ Theme Engines

2010-06-02T23:26:00.003-10:00

The GTK+ widget library supports diverse customization of look and feel for GTK+ applications. This is achieved by installing a shared library (*.so or *.dll) that provides a particular GTK+ theme style. The default GTK+ theme engine (Raleigh) is too generic and old-fashioned to suit my style. The pixmap engine is too much of a resource hog, and the Wimp engine doesn't seem to work for GTK+ 2.18 and later releases.

My favorite GTK+ theme engines are thus:

Aurora engine
Candido engine
CleanIce engine
Clearlooks engine
Lighthouseblue engine
MagicChicken engine
Murrine engine
Nodoka engine
Rezlooks engine
Smooth engine
Wonderland engine

Compiling GTK+ Theme Engines 2.20.1

After building GTK+ 2 library, I can compile GTK+ theme engines, including Clearlooks and Lighthouseblue. I couldn't find the upstream release of gtk2-engines, so I downloaded the source from Debian Sid's page.

gtk2-engines requires intltool, so I compiled intltool first.

tar xzvf intltool-0.41.1.tar.gz
cd intltool-0.41.1
./configure --prefix=/mingw
make
make install

configure script will complain if xgettext, msgmerge and msgfmt are not found. I got these programs from my static gettext package I compiled previously.

Then, I compiled gtk-engines as follows:

tar xzvf gtk2-engines_2.20.1.orig.tar.gz
cd gtk-engines-2.20.1/
./configure --prefix=/mingw --disable-deprecated --enable-animation
make

I only wanted clearlooks, so I copied libclearlooks.dll.

find -iname \*dll
cp ./engines/clearlooks/.libs/libclearlooks.dll /mingw/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/engines

Compiling Aurora Theme Engine

I downloaded the Aurora source from here and unpack it. I compiled Aurora like this:

./configure --prefix=/mingw --enable-animation
make
make install

Cygwin: Compiling Smooth Theme Engine

The source code of smooth theme engine can be downloaded from here. Compiling is easy:

./configure --prefix=/usr
make
make install

Download Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit & 64-bit Korean)

2010-06-01T09:28:00.004-10:00

Here are torrents and ed2k links for Windows 7 Korean editions.

32-bit Windows 7 Korean Ultimate
Bittorrent: ko_windows_7_ultimate_k_x86_dvd_x15-65969.iso.torrent
ed2k: ko_windows_7_ultimate_k_x86_dvd_x15-65969.iso
64-bit Windows 7 Korean Ultimate
Bittorrent: ko_windows_7_ultimate_k_x64_dvd_x15-65970.iso.torrent
ed2k: ko_windows_7_ultimate_k_x64_dvd_x15-65970.iso
32-bit Windows 7 Professional KN (retail)
HTTP: X15-65855.iso
64-bit Windows 7 Professional KN (retail)
HTTP: X15-65856.iso

You can also download other editions of Windows 7 Korean from the Web. Look here.

After downloading the Ultimate edition of Windows 7, use the eicfg_remover to remove ei.cfg from the ISO file. This will allow you to install any edition of Windows 7 with a single DVD.

To download the Windows 7 ISO using a .torrent file, use any bittorrent client, such as utorrent, vuze or aria2c. To download from ed2k links, use emule or amule.

Additional ed2k links for other languages, such as English, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, etc. are available here.

Compiling GTK+ 2.20.x for Windows with MinGW

2010-05-31T02:39:00.009-10:00

It's been quite a while since I compiled GTK+ 2.16.x for Windows. I am building a complete stack of GTK+ 2.20.x library before beginning my programming projects. Although I've only compiled the GTK+ library, I want to learn more about GTK+ programming and build simple programs sooner or later. GTK+ is a solid and mature library, but it is disappointing to find a limited number of GTK+ applications for Windows. I hope there'll be more development with GTK+ on the Windows platform.

This tutorial makes use of the free MinGW compiler to build GTK+. So install MinGW before you continue. GTK+ depends on many basic libraries that provide image, localization, font and other functions. These prerequisite libraries have be compiled first. Launch MSYS (rxvt) from the Start menu (MinGW > MSYS > MSYS (rxvt) ). The following steps require you to type commands into MSYS console.

zlib 1.2.5

zlib is an essential compression library required by png, tiff, freetype and cairo. Get the zlib source (zlib-1.2.5.tar.gz and unpack it.
```
tar xzvf zlib-1.2.5.tar.gz
cd zlib-1.2.5/
```
Compile zlib like this:
```
make -f win32/Makefile.gcc
```
Then, manually copy the files as follows:
```
cp -iv zlib1.dll /mingw/bin
cp -iv zconf.h zlib.h /mingw/include
cp -iv libz.a /mingw/lib
cp -iv libzdll.a /mingw/lib/libz.dll.a
```
libiconv 1.13.1
libiconv is a character-set conversion tool. It is required by gettext and freetype. Download the libiconv source and compile libiconv statically:
```
./configure --prefix=/mingw --disable-shared
make
make install
```
Then, make iconv.dll from the static library libiconv.a:
```
cd /mingw/lib
a2dll libiconv.a -o iconv.dll
mv -iv iconv.dll /mingw/bin/
```
You can get a2dll from the package mingw-utils-0.3.tar.gz. Then, modify the beginning of file /mingw/lib/libiconv.la as follows:
```
# The name that we can dlopen(3).
dlname='../bin/iconv.dll'

# Names of this library.
library_names='libiconv.a'
```

gettext 0.18

GNU gettext is a tool for localizing or translating programs. Get the source here and compile it like this:

./configure --prefix=/mingw --enable-threads=win32 --enable-relocatable --disable-shared
cd gettext-runtime/
make
make install

Then, make intl.dll from the static library libintl.a like this.

cd /mingw/lib
a2dll libintl.a -o intl.dll -liconv
mv -iv intl.dll /mingw/bin/

glib 2.24.1
Glib's configure script requires the following executables in the PATH. Download and save them in /mingw/bin:
- pkg-config.exe statically built version 0.23
- msgfmt.exe statically built version 0.17
Get the glib source from ftp.gnome.org and compile glib as follows:
```
./configure --prefix=/mingw --with-threads=win32 --with-pcre=internal
make
make install
```

libPNG 1.4.2

Compile PNG library like this:

tar xzvf libpng-1.4.2.tar.gz
cd libpng-1.4.2
./configure --prefix=/mingw
make
make install

libJPEG 8b

Compile JPEG like this:

./configure --prefix=/mingw
make
make install

libTIFF 3.9.2

Compile libTIFF like this:

./configure --prefix=/mingw
make
cd libtiff
make install

Freetype 2.3.12
Download the Freetype2 source here and compile it as follows:
```
./configure --prefix=/mingw
make
make install
```
eXpat 2.0.1 or libXML 2.7.7
Fontconfig depends on either eXpat or libXML2. Both eXpat and libXML2 are XML parser libraries. I prefer eXpat because it's smaller. Libxml2 depends on Zlib and Libiconv. eXpat and libXML2 can be compiled like this:
```
./configure --prefix=/mingw
make
make install
```
fontconfig 2.8
Compile Fontconfig as follows:
```
./configure --prefix=/mingw --disable-docs
make
make install
```
If you've compiled libXML2 and want to use it with fontconfig, specify --enable-libxml2 on the configure line.
ATK 1.30.0
Download the ATK source here and compile it like this:
```
./configure --prefix=/mingw
make
make install
```
Pixman 0.18.2 and Cairo 1.8.0
get Pixman and Cairo from cairographics.org. Compile pixman like this:
```
./configure --prefix=/mingw
make
make install
```
Then, compile cairo:
```
./configure --prefix=/mingw --disable-pthread
make
make install
```

Pango Library 1.28.0

Compile Pango like this:

./configure --prefix=/mingw --with-included-modules=yes
make
make install

GTK+ 2.20.1
At last, we are ready to compile GTK+ 2 for Windows. Download the source from here. I compiled GTK+ like this:

./configure --prefix=/mingw --without-libjasper --with-included-loaders=yes --with-included-immodules=ime --enable-debug=no
make
make install

To test your newly compiled GTK+ library, run gtk-demo.exe.

In case you want to try and use my GTK+ Win32 build, get it from the Download link above.

My Windows Vista/7 Power Settings

2010-05-19T00:41:00.000-10:00

Here are my power settings on Windows Vista or Windows 7. I find the default setting annoying or inadequate, especially the Start menu power button triggering sleep.

Lid Close Action
- On Battery: Sleep
- Plugged in: Do nothing
Power Button Action
- On Battery: Hibernate
- Plugged in: Hibernate
Sleep Button
- On Battery: Sleep
- Plugged in: Hibernate
Start menu power button
- On Battery: Shut down
- Plugged in: Shut down

Using Mencoder To Merge AVI Files

2010-05-16T21:42:00.000-10:00

Merging 2 AVI files can be easily accomplished with mencoder. But the two AVI files must be encoded with the same video and audio codec. Assuming that you have part1.avi and part2.avi, seamlessly consecutive, the mencoder command to concatenate them is:

mencoder -ovc copy -oac copy -o whole.avi part1.avi part2.avi