WiredRevolution.com » windows

Convert text files within a directory from Windows to Unix format

Ryan — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:14:33 +0000

When a file is saved in Windows and then moved to a Linux system the formatting differences can cause a variety of problems. To effectively use these files you will need to change the format from Windows/DOS to Unix. This conversion occurs by simply removing the Windows carriage return characters.

I have explained how to use the tr command remove these windows carriage returns, but when you have a large amount of files to convert this can become tedious. As a solution to this I have written a BASH script to convert all text files within a directory.

#!/bin/bash

for file in /directory/to/convert/*
do
  if [[ -f $file && `file $file | grep text` ]]
  then
    tr -d '\r' < $file > "$file"_clear
    mv "$file"_clear $file
  fi
done

Remove Windows carriage returns with tr

Ryan — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:46:17 +0000

The end of a line in a UNIX text file is designated with the newline character. In Windows, a line ends with both newline and carriage return ASCII characters. If a file is saved in Windows and then moved to a Linux system these carriage returns can cause all sorts of problems. If the text file is a BASH script for example it will not run correctly since it doesn’t know how to interpret these characters.

You can verify that a text file has these Windows carriage returns by running the cat command with the ‘-v‘ option which shows the non-printing characters.

$ cat -v inputfile | head

first line^M
second line^M

You can see the carriage return characters, “^M” (Cntl-M).

CRLF = Carriage Return Line Feed

There are various was to remove these carriage returns. You can use the dos2unix command but this is rarely installed by default on a a Linux system. The easiest way then is to use the “tr” command utility which always comes standard.

The command uses the tr command which translates and removes characters. This will remove the carriage return characters.

$ tr -d '\r' < inputfile > outputfile

You can verify they are really gone by running the same cat command again.

$ cat -v outputfile | head

first line
second line

You can also run the file command.

$ file inputfile

inputfile:             ASCII text

Optionally you can now overwrite the original file.

$ mv outputfile inputfile

Creating a Windows Boot Disk with a Linux Machine

Ryan — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:36:27 +0000

The standard way to create a Windows boot disk is to have access to a Windows system. If you have access to a Linux system instead, and know a couple tricks, you can create boot disk as well.

The first thing to do is find a website that has the boot disks available for download. There are plenty of these out there so take your pick. The only thing you must specifically do is make sure that you download the disk image and not a self extracting executable file which must be run under Windows.

If the image is zipped unzip it.

$ unzip cdboot1.zip

Archive:  cdboot1.zip
  inflating: CDBOOT1.IMG

Check that the disk image is the correct size.

$ ls -lh CDBOOT1.IMG

-r--r--r-- 1 ryan ryan 1.5M 1999-12-07 12:00 CDBOOT1.IMG

Finally, you will use the dd command to copy the disk image to a blank floppy disk.

$ dd if=CDBOOT1.IMG of=/dev/fd0

Find the MAC address on a Windows machine

Ryan — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 18:54:48 +0000

For whatever reason lets assume you find yourself on a Windows machine and you need to obtain the MAC address of its network adapter. Do the following.

Go to Start -> Run which will bring up a text box. In this box type cmd. A command prompt will appear.

Type this is the terminal.

ipconfig /all

A lot of information will fly by but the MAC address is labeled Physical Address. The number is 6 pairs of hexidecimal numbers separated by dashes. It will look like this.

Physical Address . . . . . . . . . : a1-b2-c3-d4-e5-f6

If the machine has more than one network adapter (wired and wireless), then you will see an address for each one.

This will work with Windows 2000/XP/Vista.