CMD.exe on steriods!

Windows command console (cmd.exe) hasn’t changed much since it was first introduced in the original windows NT. When you use command shells on unix all day and try to work in cmd.exe it’s like going back in time 10 years! Basic things like tab completion (I know you can enable it in the registry), tabbed windows and a resizable window are sorely lacking. Sure there are some powerful things you can do on the windows command console but these are all separate programs and not really a part of the command console it self.

What windows needs is a good command console replacement, that’s where Console2 comes in. Console2 beta is a free replacement for cmd.exe. It’s still in beta but I’ve been using it for almost 2 months now without a problem. It makes the windows command line usable.

Of course, if you’re having a problem transitioning from UNIX to DOS and can’t stop doing ls when you should be doing dir then you need to get cygwin!

Windows usernames with spaces and Samba

Recently I had an issue where a windows user needed access to a samba share on a unix machine. The problem was that the windows user had a username with a space in it (tisk tisk) and unix/samba couldn’t directly support that. A quick workaround is to define a usermap in your smb.conf like so:

[global]
username map = /usr/local/private/usermap.txt

In the usermap.txt you define the username as follows:

username = “User Name”

Where username is the local unix username and “User Name” is the broken windows username with the space. It’s important to quote the username, otherwise samba will treat it as two different usernames. This isn’t the only use for samba usermaps but I was unable to find a well documented example of supporting windows usernames with spaces in them so hopefully this will save someone else time in the future.

The coolest application I’ve seen in a while

Do you have two systems on your desktop and two sets of keyboards and two (or three in my case) monitors? Want to use one keyboard and mouse on both systems without hardware? I’ve stumbled across a cool multi-platform app called Synergy that lets me use one keyboard and mouse on my Windows and Linux system at the same time!

The server app runs on my windows laptop (dual head) and the client side runs on my linux desktop. Now I can use the nice $120 Logitech wireless keyboard I have on both systems without any extra hardware. I simply move my mouse pointer over to the left hand side of my windows machine and it switches my keyboard over to the linux machine, without delay (although you can configure one). Very cool. It’s made my day for sure!