Enjoy Linux tools in Windows via Cygwin

Many of us don't have a choice but a Windows environment, be it XP, 2k3, W2k8, W7. If you are working for a company that is a Windows shop, you have few options and probably not supported by IT.

One can install Linux/OpenSolaris/QNX/BSD on a virtual machine to enjoy the fun offered by this operating systems. Another option would be to use Cygwin. Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows, for more information please visit their website.

I normally configure my Cygwin installation with the following packages installed:
- Base package (default selection)
- Emacs
- MinTTY
- Python

This selection makes me comfortable [happy :)] in any Windows enviroment (ease of use and power of Windows + power of Linux/Unix tools).

~ts

Setting up rxvt in cygwin

Install the following packages
- xorg-server
- xinit
- xorg-docs
- X-start-menu-icons
- inetutils
- rxvt

Linux telnet option negotiation - passive

Telnet client that comes with Debian Lenny (Linux Netkit 0.17) or Cygwin 1.7 telnet 1.7 (GNU inetutils) actively initiates option negotiation with the server. This is fine for most cases but there are old servers that just stops sending data when it does not like the option that the client tried to negotiate.

To passively participate in option negotiation, telnet can run with the following argument to force it not to send any further negotiation:

telnet <hostname> <port>

Note here that we specified the port number. By doing so, we are basically telling telnet that negotiation is done and so wait for any packet from the server.

And for old telnet server, the following .telnetrc maybe needed:

DEFAULT
        set echo
        mode character
        set crlf

~ts

MinTTY shortcuts

I am using MinTTY in cygwin port, it looks and works nice. Below are some of the shortcuts I have come accustomed to:

Copy text into Windows clipboard

Ctrl-Ins

Paste from Windows clipboard

Shift-Ins

Open new instance of MinTTY

Alt-F2

.bashrc not run in Cygwin

This can be caused by having HOME defined in Windows system/user environment. Thus say, when you do:

set HOME

... and if you get a response of "Home=D:\Home" for example then this can be fixed by:

cp -p /etc/defaults/etc/skel/.bash_profile ~

in Cygwin bash shell.

See also this link for more information.
ts