Tag: windows

Git on Windows: “You have some suspicious patch lines”

Update 2008-04-24: as commenter Jakub Narebski correctly points out, it should be better to use core.autocrlf and crlf attribute for resolving this issue, but I have had no chance to test this up to now. The solution below is still valid, but more of the sort of an ugly hack.
Update 2008-06-11: I have stopped using this solution and only use “git-config core.autocrlf true” and “git-config core.safecrlf true” any more. It works reliably and is exactly what I need and not such an ugly hack.
Update 2008-06-22: Well, of course you can still get “You have some suspicious patch lines” if you follow the core.autocrlf approach… but this time it really means you have trailing whitespace, not just line-breaks. If you really don’t care about trailing white-space at all, my initial solution is still valid, as it simply disables this check.

If you are using Git under Windows using cygwin, and you got through the initial problems, you will soon realize that Git likes to fail with “You have some suspicious patch lines” when committing.

The cause for this problem is the carriage-return/line-feed problem of Git under Windows/cygwin: The patches contain a trailing line-feed if you edited them with a Windows editor and not strictly inside cygwin. This will trigger the pre-commit hook to fail on patches where the last line of a file has been changed.

To solve the problem, you need to edit .git/hooks/pre-commit and comment out the following lines:

if (/\s$/) {
bad_line("trailing whitespace", $_);
}

Now committing should work.

Git and Windows Vista

I recently started using Git, the version control system now used for developing the Linux Kernel. While there is no native support for Windows at the moment, you can install it using cygwin. While this works reasonably well in Windows XP, I got into severe troubles when trying the same in Windows Vista.

First, I ran into troubles installing cygwin. I figured out, that it seems to work well if you run both the installer and bash in “Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode”. I needed to adjust the file system permissions of the cygwin folder to give me write permissions, though. (Note: you have to manually install the TK-libs if you want the GUI elements of git to work.)

But Git kept failing with “access denied” messages when trying to commit from command line. The failure message said it was denied access to git-update-index. I soon found out this is due to the “User Account Control” (UAC) default behavior of auto-detecting installers and prompting if you want to execute them with raised privileges. You can see if this is the case by running git-update-index manually from bash; if you get the UAC confirmation dialog you have this problem. It seems the substring “update” triggers this behavior. As the git-update-index is launched by git commit, it won’t display the confirmation dialog of Vista, so the execution will be denied.

There are two possible workarounds:

  • Run bash with administrative privileges (not recommended!)
  • Disable the auto-detection of installers by UAC.

I used the latter way. You can disable the auto-detection by following these instructions. Brief summary:

  • Open the Local Security Policies
  • Disable “User Account Control: Detect application installations and prompt for elevation”
  • Reboot (the security policy will not be updated before!)

It should work now. You can confirm this by running git-update-index manually again. If you do not get the UAC confirmation dialog now, it worked. Try git commit now, and verify it is working. Of course, you will from now on have to right-click and “Run as Administrator” every installer you want to install, as most installers will require administrative privileges.

Update 2007-08-22: Reader EGarcia posted an interesting comment below: using the Microsoft Manifest Tool you can add an according manifest to the git-update-index.exe and git-update-ref.exe

Update 2009-02-12: Reader Kevin Broadey points out the best solution so far: create a seperate .manifest file for the affected files. He has provided an example for git-update.exe.manifest.

WinXP: How to Deactivate the “Windows Genuine Advantage Tool”

To remove Microsoft’s new “Windows Genuine Advantage-Tool”, which in the current version will check the system’s license every day against a Microsoft database, simply remove the registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\ CurrentVersion\WinLogon\Notify\WGALogon

KDE-Style Window-Movement on Windows

One of the minor features I admire most in the common X11-Window-Manager implementations on Linux is the fact that you can move and resize Windows easily without first moving the mouse to a special location of the particular window: Dragging your mouse while holding Alt+(Left-Mouse-Button) will move the window, holding Alt+(Right-Mouse-Button) will resize the window on its nearest edge.

I always missed this little feature when working on Windows. Today I found a script for AutoHotkey, which is a free (GPL) scripting environment for hotkeys. After installing AutoHotkey, simply download and launch the script by double-clicking it and now you’ll have the same behaviour for window movement and resizing as under KDE. Really cool!

AutoHotkey can do a lot more, unfortunately I have not yet had time to try out more.

OpenVPN and Tap-Win32-Adapter Problem

OpenVPN on Microsoft Windows has a problem with the TAP-Win32-Adapter driver used for the tunnel. The device needs to be deactivated/reactivated after a Windows restart before any connection can be established. In this article I present a very simple script and solution for automating this process.

Continue reading “OpenVPN and Tap-Win32-Adapter Problem”

Microsoft: Only signed drivers for Windows Vista x64

According to this Microsoft page and this Golem-Article (German), Microsoft is going to make driver signatures from Microsoft mandatory for any driver running in kernel space in Windows Vista x64. They claim security reason for this.While (faulty) drivers definitely can lead to serious (security) problems under Windows, they sometimes fulfill cruitial parts, especially in windows file system monitoring, for which there are many legitimate reasons. Having to go through the WHQL for every driver (and every minor patch) seems a little costly and time consuming to me…

Well, after all, for me it seems to be three things:

  • Additional money through additional drivers going through WHQL,
  • Anti Open-Source projects,
  • Building up the infrastructure for an (almost unbreakable) Digital Rights Management system.

Update 2007-01-23: I have to revise most points of this, as I now learned something new about it. Vista x64 will accept digitally signed drivers, but they do not necessarily be signed by Microsoft. Read more in my updated article.

Windows 2003 Server as NTP client

Our Windows 2003 Server refused to sync the clock via NTP. Main reason for this behaviour is the fact that as PDC it wants to change the NTP server’s clock as well, which is normally not permitted by the NTP server and the packet is discarded.

To change the preferred server of the Windows Time service (w32time), follow these steps:


w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:<server>,0x8 /syncfromflags:MANUAL

w32tm /config /update

net time /querysntp

w32tm /resync

(source: Meinberg Funkuhren – FAQ – Windows synchronisiert nicht mit NTP (German))