hi friends!!1 i have installed cygwin(http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/) as i needed to use linux as well as windows without using Partition Magic to creat non-dos partition and hence install Linus on my machine. can anyone please help me how i can use vi there? how can i write the code for the shell scripts and how can i test them? thanks in advance Sukhminder

You could have downloaded a live CD version of linux like knoppix which doesn't require any disk space to run as it boot straight from the CD into the OS. Or you could try a distro like phat linux which instals itself onto a FAT file system (again saving you from having to repartition). Another way would be to get a distro like mandrake which supports the resizing of NTFS/FAT partitions during installation, therefore doing away with the need for partition magic. NB always back up data before resizing partitions. I can't help you too much with vi (I'm an emacs man myself) except to say that it's all a matter of getting used to it. Until you do you may wish to consider using a different editor like mcedit which is easy to use and quite a lot like edit for DOS. Your shell scripts can be tested by either making them executable or by passing them through an interpreter, eg: 1) make executable and run: $ chmod +x myscript.sh $ ./myscript.sh 2) use an interpreter: $ sh myscript.sh

To clarify, Cygwin is not Linux, but instead provides ports of the GNU Toolset, vi, Apache, Perl, etc for MS Windows. I know that Cygwin's web site says it is a "Linux-like" environment... but it does NOT run the Linux kernel - it just has many of the tools that come with a Linux system. It's more of an API compatibility layer so it's easy to port programs that run on Linux and other UNIX variants to MS Windows because the Cygwin DLL provides a translation layer between the Windows OS and the Linux-like code you run on it. If you need the actual Linux kernel running, then what 3Dave suggests is the way to go, but if you just want an environment on a Windows system to develop some bash scripts that you'll later move to a Linux box, Cygwin might be the best choice because you don't need to reboot out of Windows. vi (really "vim") and emacs are both available as optional packages when you run the Cygwin setup - just look around the tree of packages you can install - I think they are under the "Editors" group - and check the box to install them. The subject of your message says 'FTP in Cygwin' - there are FTP servers and clients available in the Cygwin list of packages but if you just type: $ ftp myserver.com at a cygwin prompt I think it actually invokes the Windows version of FTP - again because it's running on top of Windows.