Connecting to samba share from windows guest on KVM

1. Install samba server. I will not explain this here as it depends on your linux distribution.
2. Configure it: cat /etc/samba/smb.conf
   [WorkShare]
   comment = Host Share
   path = /home/mansour/work/
   valid users = mansour
   public = yes
   writable = yes
   printable = no
   
3. Now we need add "mansour" to samba users. If you don't this, you wont be able to login to the share!
   smbpasswd -a mansour
   
4. start your KVM :
   kvm -m 2G -vga std -smp 2 -net nic,vlan=1 -net user,vlan=1 my-window-xp-pro.im
   
5. From window Start --> Run : \\10.0.2.2\WorkShare
   enter the username and password, and you should be able to view the files in your share.
   

For reference: Use Windows XP on Gentoo Linux with KVM

Installing Perl Modules with CPAN

I was trying to install the latest version of XSH2. Really a very neat utility, and a must for each XML programmer. The previous revision had a bug, and I didn't know that I can install the latest from CPAN, just like I install any other software with emerge, yum, RPM, or ruby gem. Ok, so here's the steps:

1. Login as root.
2. Initialize the CPAN configuration. This is easily done with:
   perl -MCPAN -we 'shell'
   Accepting all the defaults is ok.
   
3. Now run
   install XML::XSH2
   And you are good to go.
   

I didn't know it's that easy to install perl modules !

Copy the selected text in visual mode to search

I many cases I like to search for other occurrence of some text in a file, under vim. Here's are the steps:

1. Yank with y
2. Start the search with the forward slash "/"
3. CTRL-r then type "

And you should see the text in the search area.

Applying Mutt function to multiple messages

Sometimes you may need to apply a function to more than one message in mutt. Let's say mark all the messages in a folder as read. In this case, you need to tag all the messages. SHIFT-T will ask you for the pattern. Just type "all". Then, use the tag-prefix command ";" to apply the function.

The function to mark a message as read is "W r". The letter "W" to clear a flag. And the letter "N" is the flag indicating a New Message. When you hit enter these keys combination after tagging messages, you will notice all messages has been processed.

crossdev on gentoo and pkg-config

I was trying to link against libraries on gentoo for windows. Using mingw32 and the crossdev tools made things easier, but they were not too smooth. One of the problems was getting pkg-config prefix.
For example:
I wanted to link against dbus, so in my makefile I should use:

LIBS=$(shell pkg-config --cflags --libs dbus-1)

For none cross compile, this would work, however, for cross compile this is not the case.
Refering to the :http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Crossdev

I crated a script in /usr/bin/i686-mingw32

#!/bin/sh
SYSROOT="/usr/i686-mingw32"
export PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR="${SYSROOT}/usr/lib/pkgconfig"
unset PKG_CONFIG_PATH PKG_CONFIG_ALLOW_SYSTEM_CFLAGS PKG_CONFIG_ALLOW_SYSTEM_LIBS
exec pkg-config "$@"

but things didn't work as expected: 

03:23:39 @ test $ i686-mingw32-pkg-config --cflags dbus-1
-I/usr/include/dbus-1.0 -I/usr/lib/dbus-1.0/include 

hum, still pointing to the wrong one !

logged in as root, and :

mars ~ # cd /usr/i686-mingw32/usr/lib/pkgconfig/

mars pkgconfig # sed 's/prefix=\/usr/prefix=\/usr\/i686-mingw32\/usr/g' -i *.pc

logged in as a user again, and:

03:31:06 @ test $ i686-mingw32-pkg-config --cflags dbus-glib-1
-I/usr/i686-mingw32/usr/include/dbus-1.0 -I/usr/i686-mingw32/usr/lib/dbus-1.0/include -I/usr/i686-mingw32/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/i686-mingw32/usr/lib/glib-2.0/include  

Wonderfull, pointing to the right place.