I just uploaded a release candidate for Universal Extractor v1.6. Details and download links can be found in the MSFN forum thread. If all goes well, we should actually have a 1.6 final release relatively soon.
Somebody just pointed out to me that the download links for AutoFLAC were not working. This occurred during one of the server migrations I've been working on over the past few weeks, so I'd say it's probably been unavailable for about 2 weeks. I do apologize for this oversight - the autoflac binaries are (currently) served from a separate server than the rest of the files on this site, and I simply overlooked this when migrating servers.
For now, this has been corrected by copying the files back to the appropriate location. In the near future, I'm going to setup a new download system so that all files are tracked and served from the same location, which will prevent this issue from reoccurring, as well as giving me some more flexibility and control over the downloads. Stay tuned.
Oh, and speaking of AutoFLAC, I should mention that development is still ongoing (same with Universal Extractor), just at a much slower pace than in the past. There are numerous reasons for this, which I won't get into here, but I did want to let all of you know that updated/enhanced versions are still coming at some point.
I made available a beta version of the upcoming v1.6 release of Universal Extractor last night. I'm not making it available through the UniExtract home page because it's only a beta; it needs a lot of testing before official release. However, if you're interested in testing some of the new features and providing feedback on your results, you can find find change details and download links in this MSFN UniExtract forum post.
I just posted updates to my Inno Setup CLI Help and Modify Path Inno Setup scripts. The CLI Help is a fairly small update - it just includes updated documentation for the latest version of Inno Setup.
The ModPath update is a bit more substantial; I added the ability to add multiple directories to the system path instead of just a single directory. Usually this capability should not be necessary, but I had a need to do this for the new version of Universal Extractor that's currently in development. If you're currently using an older version of the script, though, be sure to read the updated directions. This new version is not directly compatible with older versions and requires a few small changes to your main installer script.
The updates can be downloaded from each script's home page:
Inno Setup CLI Help
Modify Path
JST posted a good question a while back in the Universal Extractor forum. He wanted to know if any executable files (such as installers) were actually run during the extraction process. For the vast majority of files, UniExtract will "rip" the contents out of the file using a extraction/decompression utility. For example, Inno Setup installers are handled by innounp, self-extracting Zip files are handled by 7-Zip or Info-ZIP, etc. However, there also cases where some files simply must be executed in order to extract the contents.
JST was concerned about this because he sometimes uses Universal Extractor to investigate malicious files. Obviously you want to be very careful when examining malicious files, so his concern was well justified. He asked for a list of file types that UniExtract will actually execute when extracting. It took me a while to get around to documented this, but I've finally done so. You can read the full list in this forum thread:
Are any files executed during extraction?
This is good information to know, especially if you ever work with suspicious files. I'm probably going to add this information to the main UniExtract page as well, and will look into possibly adding a warning message to UniExtract itself before executing any untrusted files.
I'm sure that everyone reading this site is aware of the fact that Windows Vista has made some rather drastic changes to the underlying OS in the name of security. Some of these are good and overdue changes; some, however, are freakin' brain dead (you can see my last post for a very brief summary of my feelings about Vista from a user's perspective). Regardless of my personal feelings, the fact is Vista is here and it's install base is only going to grow as people purchase new PCs. Given that I maintain a few applications for Windows, I have to take Vista into consideration and make sure that my apps continue to play nicely on Microsoft's current and future operation systems.
Unfortunately, I'm rather late to this party. Until just recently I have had no direct exposure with Vista; I even managed to go through the entire alpha, beta, and release candidate stages of Vista without seeing a Vista system a single time. Needless to say, once it was released I began receiving notices that Universal Extractor has Vista compatibility issues. I'm sure AutoFLAC does as well, but I guess those users are a bit less demanding. :-) (I say that in jest, of course - the UniExtract community over on the MSFN forum has been fantastic!)
The good news is that I finally do have access to a Vista system. I can't stand using it (again, see my last post if you want to know how I really feel about it), but it can at least serve as a test box for UniExtract and AutoFLAC. The next couple revisions of each will focus on Vista compatibility, and in anticipation of this I've begun doing some research into the Vista changes that most affect applications and installers. I'm post some of the more useful links I've found both for my own reference and for anyone else that may benefit from this information.
New ACLs Improve Security in Windows Vista - detailed article about many of the changes to user and administrator privileges, file system and registry permissions, etc.; very informative, though highly technical
File and Registry Virtualization – the good, the bad, and the ugly - discussion about the compatibility features provided by Vista to allow older "non-compliant" applications to install and function properly
Vista considerations - small write-up on the Inno Setup Knowledge Base discussing Inno-specific considerations
Vista FAQ and INNO Vista and XP questions - two Inno Setup newsgroup discussion threads concerning Vista compatibility
I know there's a lot more information out there, and I'll probably update this post as I come across it, but this will get me started. Do you know of any other good resources? Please post a comment!
I'll probably follow this up with more coherent and reasoned thoughts when I get some free time and am better rested, but for now I just felt the need to share my feelings.
That is all.
One thing I love about KDE is it's incredible breadth of configuration options. I really like to tweak my environment to best suite my needs, preferences, and habits. I know what works best for me, and prefer to have my desktop environment reflect those preferences.
Despite the vast number of preferences in the KDE Control Center, there are still quite a few options for which new GUI preference setting exists. The Hidden Configuration KDE Wiki page discusses some of these options, and is worth a read if you use KDE. In particular, I was looking for a way to disable the listing and expanding of archive files in Konqueror's sidebar. This "feature" was borrowed from Windows XP (Compressed Folders), where it always bugged the hell out of me. If I wanted view the contents of Zip files in Windows Explorer then I'd unzip the damn file.
Needless to say, I was rather dismayed and disappointed when I saw this "feature" appear in a KDE upgrade. There is no GUI preference available for disabling it, but after quite a bit of internet searching I found the above Hidden Configuration page, which discusses how to do it. It's a useful resource, and I wanted to make a note of it here both for the benefit of others as well as so I can easily find the page again next time I setup KDE. :-)
If you would like to disable this feature as well, first try entering this command (as documented in the Wiki): kwriteconfig --file konqsidebartng.rc --group General --key ShowArchivesAsFolders --type bool false. You'll need to restart Konqueror for the change to take effect. If that does not work (it didn't for me), do this instead:
~/.kde/share/config/konqsidebartng.rcShowArchivesAsFolderskwriteconfig command, you should find it under the [General] category. Delete that under [General] and instead add ShowArchivesAsFolders=false it to the top of the fileYou should now be rid of those annoying archive folders. Enjoy.
Oh, and if you'd like to disable this feature in Windows XP as well, you can easily to so by running the following command: regsvr32.exe /u zipfldr.dll. If you choose to reenable it, you can do so simply by running regsvr32.exe zipfldr.dll.
I came across a couple of very useful Windows apps tonight while doing some maintenance on my systems. The first is Core Mini-SFTP Server. This is a commercial/proprietary app, but it's available free of charge. As implied by the name, it's a stripped-down sFTP server for Windows. No installation or configuration is necessary; simply download and run the executable, specify the username, password, and root directory, then click Start. Any user can now connect via SFTP using the specified credentials. It's very convenient if you simply need quick and easy access to an sFTP server on Windows, but, of course, it does have limitations. It's strictly single user, must be run interactively (ie, it cannot be run as a service when the system starts), and only minimal sftp functionality is included (the sftp client under Linux works, for example, but scp does not). Additionally, it stores the specified password in plaintext within the registry. Keep this in mind when choosing a password, and be sure to delete the key after you're finished if it's a sensitive password (HKCU\Software\FTPWare\msftpsrvr\msftpsrvr).
Next up is a fine new FOSS app for Windows. Infra Recorder is a very slick CD burning application based on cdrecord. The interface is very nice and intuitive, functionally it can do just about anything you'd expect of a CD burning application, and so far it seems quite stable (considering it's a beta release). I'm quite pleased with it so far. The audio capabilities are somewhat limited (it can only handle WAV files directly, for example), but given that I use Exact Audio Copy for all of my audio CD needs it's not much of an issue for me. It'll make a great alternative to cdrtfe, my current burning app of choice under Windows.
Enjoy. :-)
Edit: I'm afraid I'm going to have to take back some of the praise for Infra Recorder. It doesn't seem to actually want to write the disc image that you tell it to burn. Instead, it just pretends to burn it for several minutes, letting you think it's being written to disc. I discovered this after thinking I had burned a freshly downloaded 700 MB Kubuntu ISO, only to find out after I had deleted ISO that it had not, in fact, been written to disc. So, I downloaded it again, checked and double-checked all settings (especially the "simulation" option, and attempted to burn it again, but it still failed. I then fired up cdrtfe and burned it without problem on the first attempt, confirming that the disc image was fine.
I'd recommend sticking with cdrtfe for important stuff for now.
One thing I always liked about Windows (compared to Linux) is that it's very easy to add custom actions to the context (right-click) menu for any given file types. For example, I used this ability with Universal Extractor to add UniExtract... entries to the context menu of archive files, and I use it with Open with Arguments to add Open with arguments... to .exe and .bat files. I missed that ability for quite some time once I began using Linux as my primary OS. Something as simple as extracting Zip files, for example, would require jumping to the command line and entering an appropriate unzip command[1]. However, a while back I stumbled across a tutorial entitled, "Creating Konqueror Service Menus", and was very pleasantly surprised to discover that this allowed me to do exactly what I had wanted for so long.
I setup a few custom actions (called "servicemenus" in KDE) a while back on my home system and pretty much forgot about it since it "just worked", but since I'm now using a new desktop system at home I'm already missing these custom actions. So, I figured I'd document them here while setting them up again. Hopefully this information will help out other Linux users. Much more thorough instructions can be found in the article referenced above - my instructions should be treated as more of a reference.
To begin, you'll need to create a new .desktop file for the action you want to perform. For the purposes of this article, I'm going to add a context menu item that will extract RAR files to the current directory. So, we'll create a new file named ~/.kde/share/apps/konqueror/servicemenus/rar.desktop. The file name is arbitrary, but it must be saved in the specified location, and must end with the .desktop extension. Next open the file in your favorite editor and add the following:
[Desktop Entry]
ServiceTypes=application/x-rar,application/x-rar-compressed
Actions=unrar
[Desktop Action unrar]
Name=Extract Here
Exec=launch.sh %d unrar x \"%f\"
Icon=package
This code is not very intuitive, so I'll explain each option
rar, and then add the listed file types to the Service Types entry. Repeat for each extension if you want to associate with multiple types[Desktop Action xxx] defined below.package icon from the current icon set. The easiest way (that I know of) to view these "pre-defined" icons is to right-click on any K-menu entry, select Edit Item, and click on the icon button for that item, It'll bring up an icon browser. Find the icon you like best, note the name, then close the windows and add it to the Icon entry.Now, let's discuss the Exec entry. Ordinarily you'd probably want to call the binary directly; eg., unrar x \"%f\". In this case, however, I want to get feedback on the current progress of the operation, as well as any errors that might have occured. Since unrar is a CLI application, running it from a GUI wouldn't provide any feedback. It would simply run in the background and then exit. To work around this, I created a "wrapper" script called launch.sh that will accept arguments passed by KDE and run the command in a standalone xterm terminal[2]. Using this method, clicking the the action in the context menu will spawn a new xterm window, which will then display the current status of the operation. It will also allow you to enter any additional information that may be necessary, such as answering an overwrite prompt or providing an archive password.
The code for the wrapper script is listed below. The only dependency is that xterm must be installed in an your $PATH.
#!/bin/bash
# enable support for spaces
IFS=$'\r\n'
# check for number of arguments
if [ "$2" = "" ]; then
echo "Usage: $0 <dir> <command>"
exit 1
fi
# set directory and command
DIR=$1
shift
COM=$@
# execute command in xterm
cd $DIR
xterm -e $COM
exit
That should do it. Save both of those files, make sure that launch.sh is copied to a location in your $PATH, then try right-clicking on a RAR file. Under the Actions submenu, you should now see an entry called Extract Here. Click it, and if all goes well the contents of the RAR file should be extracted to that directory.
For reference, here's a list of all KDE servicemenus that I have created:
Enter when complete to unmount the ISO and remove the temporary directory. This service menu requires my mountiso.sh script.Ctrl-C when complete to unmount the disk image and remove the temporary directory. This service menu requires my mountvmdk.sh script. More details can be found in the How to Mount VMware Disk Images under Linux article.xterm window; most of my servicemenus require this script[1] Yes, I know that I can install a GUI archiving utility such as Ark. However, that's not really relevant here for two reasons:
[2] Yes, you could theoretically call xterm directly from the .desktop file rather than using a wrapper script, but I couldn't get it to work properly. I had issues with getting xterm and the associated command (in this case, unrar) to accept the correct path, as well as dealing with spaces in the filename. My wrapper script will handle anything that's thrown at it (so far, anyway...).