expoweb/handbook/computing/winlaptop.html

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<h2 id="tophead">CUCC Expedition Handbook - Your Windows laptop</h2>

<h1>Setting up an Expo laptop - using Microsoft Windows</h1>

<p>A work in progress.
<p>It used to be quite simple - software equivalents existed for Windows for everything we needed. The new (since Spring 2018) requirement to make ssh keys obligatory has simply added an extra step for most things, but has made one thing (rsync) really quite hard to get working.
<ul>
<li><a href="#well">Things that already work well with  a Windows laptop</a><br>
 - Editing the handbook webpages, typing up SVX files and transcribing the logbook, <br>
 - Anything where the file-transfer to the expo surver is via the version control software (TortoiseHg or Git-for-Windows)
<li><a href="#problems">Things that cause problems</a><br>
- filenames and unintentional duplication because hardlinks are not understood by Windows,<br>
- sFTP or scp for more than a handful of files
<li><a href="#hard">Things that are really, really hard</a><br>
- using rsync <br>
- large-scale updating of several folders at once on expofiles without overwriting other people's work (which means using rsync)
</ul>

<h3 id="well">Things that already work well</h3>
<p>Anytihng to 
<h3 id="problems">Things that cause problems</h3>
<p>Linux people like to use hard-links: where there is really only one file, but it is referred to by different names. The ones you are most likely to come across are that what looks like 
/home/expo/expoweb is really just a link to /home/expo/repositories/hg/expoweb, and that 
expoweb/essentials.gpx 
is a link to /home/expo/expofiles/gpslogs/essentials/essentials2019.gpx

<h3 id="hard">Things that are really, really hard</h3>
<p>The core problem is integrating the PuTTy key management software (pagent.exe) with a terminal window.
<hr />

<p>WSL: the Windows Subsystem for Linux. The first release of this didn't do the ssh key exchange process easily. The 2019 WSL2 release includes a complete Linux kernel. If you want to use this, then please do - and then write the handbook documentation too. But beware that it has two different modes which behave differently.

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More help setting up your own laptop - more for Windows machines 2019-12-20 18:32:50 +00:00			`<!DOCTYPE html>`
			`<html>`
			`<head>`
			`<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />`
			`<title>CUCC Expedition Handbook: Programmers manual</title>`
			`<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../css/main2.css" />`
			`</head>`
			`<body>`
			`<h2 id="tophead">CUCC Expedition Handbook - Your Windows laptop</h2>`

			`<h1>Setting up an Expo laptop - using Microsoft Windows</h1>`

working on the mess that is several unfinished bit of computing manual 2019-12-27 20:35:00 +00:00			`<p>A work in progress.`
			`<p>It used to be quite simple - software equivalents existed for Windows for everything we needed. The new (since Spring 2018) requirement to make ssh keys obligatory has simply added an extra step for most things, but has made one thing (rsync) really quite hard to get working.`
			`<ul>`
			`<li><a href="#well">Things that already work well with a Windows laptop</a><br>`
			`- Editing the handbook webpages, typing up SVX files and transcribing the logbook, <br>`
			`- Anything where the file-transfer to the expo surver is via the version control software (TortoiseHg or Git-for-Windows)`
			`<li><a href="#problems">Things that cause problems</a><br>`
			`- filenames and unintentional duplication because hardlinks are not understood by Windows,<br>`
			`- sFTP or scp for more than a handful of files`
			`<li><a href="#hard">Things that are really, really hard</a><br>`
			`- using rsync <br>`
			`- large-scale updating of several folders at once on expofiles without overwriting other people's work (which means using rsync)`
			`</ul>`
More help setting up your own laptop - more for Windows machines 2019-12-20 18:32:50 +00:00
working on the mess that is several unfinished bit of computing manual 2019-12-27 20:35:00 +00:00			`<h3 id="well">Things that already work well</h3>`
			`<p>Anytihng to`
			`<h3 id="problems">Things that cause problems</h3>`
			`<p>Linux people like to use hard-links: where there is really only one file, but it is referred to by different names. The ones you are most likely to come across are that what looks like`
			`/home/expo/expoweb is really just a link to /home/expo/repositories/hg/expoweb, and that`
			`expoweb/essentials.gpx`
			`is a link to /home/expo/expofiles/gpslogs/essentials/essentials2019.gpx`
More help setting up your own laptop - more for Windows machines 2019-12-20 18:32:50 +00:00
working on the mess that is several unfinished bit of computing manual 2019-12-27 20:35:00 +00:00			`<h3 id="hard">Things that are really, really hard</h3>`
			`<p>The core problem is integrating the PuTTy key management software (pagent.exe) with a terminal window.`
More help setting up your own laptop - more for Windows machines 2019-12-20 18:32:50 +00:00			`<hr />`

working on the mess that is several unfinished bit of computing manual 2019-12-27 20:35:00 +00:00			`<p>WSL: the Windows Subsystem for Linux. The first release of this didn't do the ssh key exchange process easily. The 2019 WSL2 release includes a complete Linux kernel. If you want to use this, then please do - and then write the handbook documentation too. But beware that it has two different modes which behave differently.`

More help setting up your own laptop - more for Windows machines 2019-12-20 18:32:50 +00:00			`<div id="menu">`
			`<ul id="links">`
			`<li><a href="../index.htm">Handbook</a>`

			`<li><a href="../../infodx.htm">Main index</a></li>`
			`</ul>`
			`</div>`
			`</body>`
			`</html>`