[Linux] Mounting windows folders

Due to my new configuration which is using Windows as my default OS and Debian shell through Virtualbox, my need to have a folder shared between these two environment become a must in order to ease file sharing and exchange.

At first, i depended on “shared folders” feature of VirtualBox which after a while failed as i always get a “Protocol Error” whenever i deal with files IO on that shared folder.

That’s why i looked for another solution that is more stable than that one and reached to using “CIFS” as a way to mount windows shared folder on my Debian machine.

The steps are very easy to be made and gives you a stable robust solution away from VirtualBox problems. i can summarize these steps as follows

1. install on your Debian machine “smbfs” package which will add this new type of mounting called “CIFS”
2. suppose your machine IP is “192.168.1.6” and you shared a folder on it called “work” and this folder is secured to be used only with certain group which is administrators and one of these administrators is named “BioNuc” and have a certain password then your command will be                                                                                         mount -t cifs -o username=BioNuc ‘\\192.168.1.6\work’ <linux-path-to-mount-on-it>
3. After writing this line, you will be asked to insert your password in order to make mount process successful

That’s it, Enjoy sharing folders seamlessly

Giants Alliance

Two giants are there one called Windows and another called Linux. As i am fan of Windows Interfaces and Usability (by the way i use Windows XP) and also fan of the extreme shell power of Linux, I wished if i can exploit these two powers at the same time.

The solution i found was using Windows XP as my primary OS and adding Debian version on virtual machine. You may be asking why should this solution be said when it is well known and made by some many users but actually, i made some modifications to this solution.

What i did can be summarized in these following points:

• installing debian without any interface at all, just a shell no more
• using virtual machine shared folder technique to share a folder between my XP machine and my Linux machine
• installed ZOC program which is a powerful shell program that allows connecting using openssh and supports multi tabs which is very important feature not available in putty
• installed openssh-server on debian
• fixed an IP for my debian machine so as to save my openssh configuration one time only without changing it each time i connect to it

This way, i enjoy my XP machine and whenever i need the shell of linux. i connect using openssh on my debian virtualized machine and do what i want

I use this solution while developing ROR applications, i prepared the environment i use as follows

• installed ruby, rails, mysql on my debian machine
• opened remote connections to mysql database so as to use MySQL Query Browser from XP machine

Now, i open my IDE on XP machine that changes in folders place in the shared folder between two machines and i open my server from virtual machine and test apps on debian machine IP rather than my localhost

This experience is great and i enjoy it so much as i feel i have the power of each environment Windows & Linux at the same time

In order to optimize the performance of my Virtual Machine somehow, i raised the priority of these virtualized processes to ‘High’ or even ‘Realtime’. it is now better but not perfect

I think in order to raise the performance significantly, i need to buy another motherboard supporting Intel VT technology. Using such technology i can move virtualization from software layer (being a process that Windows XP Scheduler deal with) to hardware layer which should improve performance as stated

That’s it, i suggest you try this experience and Enjoy as i do

Export Google Document To WIKI STYLE Document

the idea is simple and only needed is that you do some simple steps and you are done

follow the following steps:

• save google document as HTML file
• view html page source and extract the html inside document body tag
• use this great tool and add in it the html you copied and you will have the wiki style document generated

That’s it, you now have the document you wrote in WIKI style. Take this text and play with it as you wish

Restore Your Deleted Partition

Yesterday, i passed through a great panic after wrongly deleting my 3 partitions. Suddenly i felt that i lost all my data forever and there is no way out of such problem.

First how this problem occurred ?? actually this issue aroused from “computer management” program on my Windows XP. I opened it and choose one partition and right click and chosen delete. After confirmation, i found all 3 partitions were deleted. What a stupid application !!! i don’t know why should windows has an application that deal with such sensitive parts when not sure of its performance and reliability

Anyway, after some search on the internet, i found a great application called “TestDisk”. Anyone can download this free application from here

I did download it and followed this nice tutorial who showcase how this application works and how to use it safely. I did exactly as it stated and i restored my deleted partitions back again as before with nothing being lost

Thanks “TestDisk” for the great application and you really deserve a donation.

Gems vs Plugins

Which one to use GEMS or PLUGINS?
This was a question i always asked and i have searched on the internet for comparisons between each one and the other

i can see that people prefer gems for the sake that it is the new future, it has obligatory versions other than rails plugins

But as for me, i only see gems useful in these two cases

1. when using code provided as gem outside of Rails, maybe with some ruby application
2. if you want to share code written in gem among applications

other than that, i see plugins better and much more maintainable for each application on its own

Uploading Images from URL using Paperclip

I was searching for a way inside paperclip that uploads image from Url instead of File which is the normal behavior handled by Paperclip but I didn't find that

After too much search and trials, I reached to a solution that is easy to be implemented and handle all cases you can expect in this process

I am applying the solution inside my model but it is preferred to add a patch to Paperclip version to use so that the same logic be applied everywhere but this exercise is left for you to do

To check the code and how it evolved to handle all special cases, Please review my gist here

Cascaded HTML SELECT elements using JQuery V2

This is a small update i made to the code, This code fixes a bug detected and also get rid of some duplicated code

his is an update to the JS function

eSpace.HTML = {
cascadeLists: function(parentId, childId, callbackFunction){
$("body").append('');
var childOptions = $('#' + childId + ' option');
$('#' + parentId + childId).html(childOptions);

$('#' + parentId).change(function(){
var parent = $('#' + parentId)[0];

var selectedOptionValue = '';
if (parent.selectedIndex > -1)
selectedOptionValue = parent.options[parent.selectedIndex].value;

if (selectedOptionValue == '')
$('#' + childId).html($('#' + parentId + childId + ' option[value=""]').clone());
else {
var childs = $('#' + parentId + childId + ' option[parent="'+selectedOptionValue+'"]');
if(childs.size() == 0)
$('#' + childId).html($('#' + parentId + childId + ' option[value=""]').clone());
else
$('#' + childId).html($('#' + parentId + childId + ' option[parent="' + selectedOptionValue + '"]').clone());
}

$('#' + childId).trigger("change");

if(callbackFunction != null) callbackFunction(parent.options[parent.selectedIndex]);
});

$('#' + parentId).trigger("change");
}
}