Midnight Commander Development Revived 304
richlv writes "Popular Unix console file manager Midnight Commander has experienced a stall for the last few years. Most distributions (including the conservative Slackware) shipped patched packages or snapshots. Despite that, everybody had a favorite bug or two — either inability to specify ssh connection port, or problems with interrupted FTP sessions. Or maybe copying of larger datasets. Or maybe the infamous 'shell is still active' message, which often brought unexpected changes of current directory with it. Whatever it was, we either cursed it every time, or learned to live with it. It seems that finally something many were waiting for has happened — there's some activity on mc development. Check out the new homepage, and let's hope revival is both healthy and lengthy."
"let's hope revival is both healthy and lengthy." (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, and let's welcome them back by taking down their webserver.
Nice job.
Re:"let's hope revival is both healthy and lengthy (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, and let's welcome them back by taking down their webserver.
Nice job.
Seriously, three comments and the server's already 500ing?!? I had to get Winnertz Patrick's phone number from the whois information and call him to ask about the new MC.
Re:"let's hope revival is both healthy and lengthy (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously, three comments and the server's already 500ing?!? I had to get Winnertz Patrick's phone number from the whois information and call him to ask about the new MC.
So not only is their server going to be down, but now their Web admin's phone is going to be ringing off the hook!
Way to go, dude.
Mirror (Score:2, Funny)
I didn't get a 500, so here's a mirror: ;-) )
(not quite what I expected, to be honest
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/trac/web/api.py", line 339, in send_error
'text/html')
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/trac/web/chrome.py", line 715, in render_template
return stream.render(method, doctype=doctype)
File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/genshi/core.py", line 179
Re:Mirror (Score:5, Funny)
My god, it's full of code!
Re:"let's hope revival is both healthy and lengthy (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry for this.
There are currently over 2000 different IPs online on the webserver _per minute_. We are currently looking for a solution to fix this as fast as possible :S Sorry for the downtime (and thanks for your excellent DoS! :))
Re:"let's hope revival is both healthy and lengthy (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry for this.
There are currently over 2000 different IPs online on the webserver _per minute_.
Welcome to 1997.
(oh, wait, this is the Midnight Commander team that we are talking to)
Er, dude, this Slashdot thingi has been doing this to webservers for over a decade now! Good morning, and welcome to 2009!
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Seriously, three comments and the server's already 500ing?!?
It was probably running Dolphin. [wikipedia.org]
Re:"let's hope revival is both healthy and lengthy (Score:3)
Couldn't have been a very beefy webserver if the subscriber preview was enough to knock it offline. Insert lame and predictable jokes here.
Re:"let's hope revival is both healthy and lengthy (Score:5, Funny)
So Lame and Predictable walk into this bar...
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... Lame fell over and Predictable smiled.
lame and predictable (Score:4, Funny)
I think I've heard this one. Not a fan.
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They're doing development on Midnight Commander...I doubt they thought they were going to need a ton of resources.
Still, I'm glad to see 'em back. MC is a big help when you're working on the console.
Re:"let's hope revival is both healthy and lengthy (Score:4, Funny)
Priceless. Dead as a doornail. *sigh* Still, it's nice to see MC being developed again. (Or not see in the case of what we've done to the server. See? This is why we can't have nice things!)
MC is always my go to file manager in Linux. I've tried other graphical clients, and none cut it for ease of use and simplicity.
All hail Midnight Commander's victorious return!
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Priceless. Dead as a doornail.
He's just pinin' for the fjords!
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I remember before Linux my first hint at this was Volvalk|sp?| Commander, that some Russian uploaded on my BBS. It was great when I got Linux in 1994 messing with the commands I did a MC and I was quite happy to see it.
Yes I am sure people will point out all of those are based on Norton Commander, but still, I lay out my windows like in MC for me to work.
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I remember before Linux my first hint at this was Volvalk|sp?| Commander,
Volkov Commander [egner-online.de]? (Warning: The URL given links to a page that may cause uncontrollable flashbacks to the Web circa 1995. Proceed with caution.)
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Krusader. It's the KDE based MC clone.
I'm sure there are purists out there who don't want the KDE libs on their machines or aren't into this newfangled GUI stuff. Who want that horrible looking interface on a console. But me, I think Krusader is way slicker than MC.
And did I say TABS? Sweeet.
Re:"let's hope revival is both healthy and lengthy (Score:5, Informative)
Okay.. thanks for taking down my/our webserver.. however most of the people will be interested in the sourcecode (at least I hope so).
For those which only want to have the code, please have a look on this git mirror:
http://repo.or.cz/w/midnight-commander.git
as I've currently took down the webserver because it makes no sense to let him running this way. I'll search for a solution as fast as possible.
Greetings
Patrick Winnertz
on behalf of the MC Development Team
window maker ??? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm still waiting for a restart on wmaker's development. anyone have any news about it ?
great for patch work (Score:5, Interesting)
I love mc!
I use it all the time for patch management. One little tidbit that most people do not know about mc is that you can cd into a patch. Edit the diffs in the patch, and copy a diff from one patch to another patch file, just like copying or moving a file.
Norton is going to be pissed... (Score:2)
when he learns someone his cloning his file manager.
I'm interested to hear from MC users the advantages of MC over say konqueror with frames and fish to do remote file management.
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How about not needing an X-Windows environment?
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I thought he sold it all the Symantec anyway, including rights to use his name
And I'm sure he's considering suing them for defamation of character.
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How do I use konqueror with frames and fish on my web tablet? :-)
MC is self-contained, relatively easy to install, fast, and works with vanilla ssh. Not sure what frames and fish are (links?), but I'd be surprised if they were as easy to install for a non-root user (as I often am).
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Frames are just that, frames. Like in a web browser, but instead for your file browser. Pretty simple. MC has 2 frames, konquorer can have as many frames as you like.
FiSH is a Filesystem over SsH. Put fish://user@host/path/ in your konqueror address bar and you can browse a remote filesystem just as if it were local. It all works out of the box too, really nice.
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Fish [wikipedia.org] means that you can do file movement over ssh (meaning you dont need anything more than ssh running on the server)
Frames are well frames, as in its a filemanager that has a left/right or top/bottom divide, much like mc, so you can drag files from one side to the other.
I do think its not really fair to compare GUI tools to CLI tools as konqueror has the obvious disadvantages of being a gui tool, while i can also get an uninitiated friend to drag the music he wants to a second frame, while this is unlike
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Like scp(1) or rsync(1), then? Scp comes with any sensible ssh installation, and rsync is very widely used.
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I'm glad somebody else remembers Norton Commander.
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Norton Commander was great until it hit ver. 5, when it became bloatware. It felt sluggish and ate a ton of memory, which was still pretty important then (especially for those that still sported 640K-1M of RAM)... Volkov Commander became a great substitute, since it was written in assembly and the executable was quite a bit less than 100K in size (comparing to ~300K or so of NC executable).. It was so common in some places (like Russia) that people thought there was something wrong with a PC if NC or VC was
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1. Pops up faster
2. Being able to use it over a tty console
3. Hotkeys
4. If you want to compare it to a KDE app, at least pick Krusader
5. Profit
Amish (Score:2, Funny)
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Nah, nothing says buggy like a windows-based file manager.
The best piece of software since 4DOS. :-) (Score:5, Interesting)
Midnight Commander is one of the tools that I could live without, but I sure wouldn't want to. I use it all over the place ... on the Solaris servers and my Windows XP workstation here at work, on my Linux, OS/2, and Windows boxes at home, on my Nokia 770 tablet, etc.
It makes it easier to delete files and directory trees with certainty (and accuracy!), the built-in editor is good enough for modifying shell scripts and even making moderate code changes to more involved programs, its built-in FTP capability is invaluable when one has to flip a lot of files or directories between hosts, and its customizable menus and panelization capabilities can add some fairly powerful capabilities to even the most dedicated command-line user.
I love my Midnight Commander! :-)
And I thought it finally safe... (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, I can't say much about the merits of Midnight Commander as an actual program, but for years I've not-so-silently cursed it for its choice of executable names.
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...To mistype "mv".
This is the first thing I thought of when I saw this article, and I had a bet with myself that someone else would mention it, too. There aren't many shell commands more common than "mv", and the 'c' key is sitting there right next to the 'v'. Yes, you can alias your way out of this, but I found it simpler and more satisfying to just "rm /usr/bin/mc".
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Um...or you could just remove the package properly. And complain to the idiot devs of your distro for installing such a niche package by default.
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I've had the same problem with metafont. The 'f' is even closer to the 'v' than the 'c' is. And the worst thing is, you can't even kill mf with ctrl-c. You have to ctrl-z out of it, then `kill -9 %1`.
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Sending SIGKILL around should be the last resort ...
Ctrl-D appears to work as expected, although it leaves an annoying log file in the current directory.
Thankfully, I've never accidentally invoked Metafont.
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As the last resort, it should always work. Is there a good reason for any program to ignore ctrl-c?
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...To mistype "mv".
Reminds me of the time I aliased emacs with a special .emacs for editing /etc files. The alias was em, as in:
em /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
Turns out "e" is really close to "r" on the keyboard.
Text displays in today's environment? (Score:2, Insightful)
As Midnight Commander is a text mode application. It can be used locally and/or remotely, on the console or under the X Window System.
Do text apps still have a place in today's world? Heck, network speeds and capacities (read bandwidth) have improved a great deal. I would rather have these programmers focus their efforts on Krusader [krusader.org]? It seriously needs some love.
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Yes, text displays in today's environment. The vast majority of servers don't need to have a bunch of X applications on them. Its a waste of resources.
Re:Text displays in today's environment? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would rather have these programmers focus their efforts on Krusader [krusader.org]? It seriously needs some love.
Ah, again the myth that open source developers are a free workforce you can redirect between projects on your whim... It just doesn't go like that, people work on whatever happens to interest them at the time.
(this comes from another Krusader user btw - by the look of their web page, they seem to be doing alright)
Re:Text displays in today's environment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do text apps still have a place in today's world?
Not on the desktop, but there are large number of computer users who work on headless computers, and frankly don't want anything more than a console open with ssh.
I just completed a four year ph.d, during which my *entire* research effort was conducted using a linux cluster to which I connected via putty or bash, depending on where I was.
Yes I know, and so did my colleagues, that its possible with todays faster conection speed to run a gui over that connection, but why bother when you can already get so much done in a console window?
I use GUI apps a lot, they have an important place in the world of modern computing, but so do CLI apps.
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> and this is why there will never be a year of the linux desktop
Yes... because we can't or won't pull an Office 2007 whereby everyone has
their nice comfortable and old tools forcibly ripped away from them just
so they can be forced to use the flavor of the month.
Forget about "consistency" between apps. How about consistency over time.
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Text mode apps are great because they fire up quickly, look and act the same on different platforms, can be highly functional and flexible, and use moderate resources. For all these reasons, they will use less of your time. So if your time is important to you, learn to use them.
Kurt
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Do text apps still have a place in today's world?
I tried to reply to you in pictographs and hieroglyphs, but accursed slashcode forces me to use text.
I would rather have these programmers focus their efforts on Krusader ? It seriously needs some love.
So jump right in! Meanwhile, no programmers are being drafted against their will to work on one program over another.
(This is a longstanding gripe of mine at the fringes of Free Software. "That developer shouldn't be wasting his time on <program x>;
Point well taken (Score:2)
I understand what you are saying. Sadly, it is this very paradigm that will keep us from "world domination" yet we have the resources.
Sad indeed! 10 years from today, we'll still be where we are now...you might ask: Where? I would answer: STUCK in the corridors of irrelevance when it comes to the desktop.
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I'm pretty sure the people working on this project would consider anything "desktop" oriented irrelevant.
If I can type 'mc', hit a bunch of hotkeys, and be done in a couple of seconds isnt' that a tool worth having? I can do a hell of a lot with mc before krusader even loads up. And I don't even have to take my fingers off the keyboard.
That's not irrelevant to the desktop, that's a superior alternative to the desktop.
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Screenshots? (Score:5, Funny)
Magellan? (Score:2, Interesting)
While we're resurrecting old text mode utilities, can we get a modern Magellan clone? None of the search front-ends to stuff like Spotlight or Beagle that I've tried come close to being as cool as Magellan was.
By the way, does Magellan still work on Windows? The last time I tried was probably on XP SP1.
Who needs MC ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Smaller, faster, compiles fine on all platforms with any C compiler and it only requires curses.
And most impportantly it doesn't crashes and it doesn't corrupsts files like MC does.
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And most impportantly it doesn't crashes and it doesn't corrupsts files like MC does.
Uhuh... but it doesn't have a builttin spellcheckster I thinks
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gitfm is lacking sorely in a number of areas. Here're just a couple major ones:
- no vfs so you can't enter tar.gz files or rpms, or cpio files
- keybinding support is inconsistent. For example often times F10 is mapped by the terminal or the windowing system to a particular function. Normally you'd expect that F10 and Esc-0 are the same. But this is not the case in gitfm. Although Esc-0 works from the main screen, you cannot use it to exit the "view" mode.
- no apparent way to change directories in gitfm
Re:Who needs MC ... (Score:4, Informative)
You can FUD like the best of em, I give you that.
I have MCs still running that were started 3 years ago (and used, too !), so bollocks on the crashes.
Corrupts files ? Care to give an example ? At least I have not run into such a bug.
I'll give GnuIT another look. Last time I tried it, I went back to mc.
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Mostly it's when you need to run a command on a number of files for which you can't come up with a simple glob or regex.
IANACLH (Score:3, Informative)
I am not a command line hacker - mc has always been a VERY important tool I install in just about every box I've ever set up.
Glad to see it's not forgotten about
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Okay, now transfer this six-level-deep application directory tree to the new server using only the command-line ftp client found on a vanilla Solaris 8 server. :-) And no, the software isn't available in package form, the current config data on the host server is required.
Oh, and you have to have it up and running in 15 minutes because we have a customer that want to test it TODAY.
I'm gonna use mc, thank you!
Sometimes prefab building sections possess more utility than a pile of building blocks even though
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"Okay, now transfer this six-level-deep application directory tree to the new server using only the command-line ftp client found on a vanilla Solaris 8 server. :-) "
Umm... have you never heard of tar?
If the answer is "no", then, no offense, but you have *no business* administrating Solaris (or any Unix, for that matter).
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Heh. Yes, that's a good solution at times, but tar is useless when you don't have enough scratch space left to make that 20GB directory tree into a tarball in the first place. :-)
Not a bad solution for many problems, however. Just not large ones.
Re:IANACLH (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, now transfer this six-level-deep application directory tree to the new server using only the command-line ftp client found on a vanilla Solaris 8 server.
There are many ways to do that.
Easy: tar, ftp, tar /dest /source ; tar -cf - * ) | ssh dest 'cd dir ; tar -xf -'
No disk space: NFS mount, find source | cpio -pmudv
Crazy: dd over netcat
Encrypted for the internet: ( cd
MC isn't the only way to copy files, it isn't even a good way to copy files.
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I use mc because I can't be root on the servers at work (I don't play sysadmin, I write software), I don't have the space to create large tarballs, and things like nfs mounts are simply not permitted here between servers.
My limits likely wouldn't exist if I could be root here, but that isn't the case.
Your solutions are very good for the most part, just not for me. :-)
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I use mc because I can't be root on the servers at work
You mean they don't trust you?
I don't have the space to create large tarballs
Your company is too tight to buy disks which cost almost nothing.
things like nfs mounts are simply not permitted here between servers.
Your company want to be obstructive.
Your solutions are very good for the most part, just not for me. :-)
Netcat would work with the limits you have stated. You can bind ports over 1024. But if you are going to put netcat on the destination machine you might as well use sshd on a high port.
If you really work for the kind of company that don't trust you with root access on the machine you use, won't give you decent sized disks to do your job, and ban NFS you might want to spend some
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Hey! Stop trying to make viable recommendations for my artificially contrived hypothetical situation here... :-)
Besides, in all seriousness:
> rsynch
-bash: rsynch: command not found
Oops. :-(
Next!
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Hey! Stop trying to make viable recommendations for my artificially contrived hypothetical situation here... :-)
So.. What you are saying is that MC only has value in artificially contrived hypothetical situations?
Useful.
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Not all jobs are the same, I've worked at a lot of companies where I did not have root. My time is money, most of that time, mc is quicker for me then any of the above. Most of the time though, the above is not available. mc has value to me, and apparently to others, if that bothers you - troll elsewhere.
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I'm only teasing at this point, I guess you are too. But to be sure, it's spelled 'rsync'.
Anyone else regret... (Score:3)
Anyone else regret not getting attached to tools like MC years ago?
There are a few tools that pop up whenever people discuss the easiest or best way to do a task... and I always wish I had made the investment of time to get proficient with those tools. However it almost seems too late.
For example, vi and emacs... I am sure they are great, but the investment of time to get proficient makes it hard to justify even trying. So on my headless linux boxen I use nano, I can do everything I need to do without a cheatsheet.
MC is the same way... I have tinkered with it, but I always found myself exiting to the command line because I would find something I didn't know how to do and didn't want to take the time to figure it out.
Does anyone have any tips on how to best add these types of tools to your tool set when you've mastered an alternative. Simply saying to use it doesn't take into consideration productivity.
Are these tools worth investing personal time into, say instead of studying for a certification or something. Are the gains really that significant?
Far Manager (Score:2)
Proper archive support, plug-in architecture, etc,etc.
http://www.farmanager.com/ [farmanager.com]
I don't even consider touching any pc running Windows without a copy of this jewel.
Midnight Commander is nice; Worker is better. (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone know of a more vi-like mc? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah! Let's post about some obscure piece of software so unused not even unemployed open sores "programmers" want to touch it.
Congratulations, you have officially identified yourself as completely clueless.
Arg! not mc again!! (Score:2, Interesting)
The two programs that drive me bonkers are mc and vi. Why? because I'm not savvy to their syntax and their is no obvious way to get out of them once you launch them. Control-c and control-d and control-z all seem to get captured by mc.
So many times I've accidentally typed mc when I meant something else!
Of course by now I've memorized that :q gets me out of vi.
I suppose you could give the same lament about emacs but one never accidentally types "emacs". Most unix command lines are 2 letters so one has the
Re:Arg! not mc again!! (Score:4, Insightful)
> The two programs that drive me bonkers are mc and vi. Why?
> because I'm not savvy to their syntax and their is no obvious way
> to get out of them once you launch them.
So F10 for QUIT is too hard, especially when it's actually printed on the key bar (which in every distro I tried was always set to be displayed by default)?
C'mon man...
Re:Arg! not mc again!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that if you're running MC in gnome-terminal, F10 doesn't work (it brings up the window menu. Now you might say why am I running MC in GT, but we all know that linux users can't stay away from the command line...
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The function key line showing "10 QUIT" is displayed on the bottom left by default, the "eXit" option is displayed under the File menu in an obvious place at the bottom, and typing "exit" at the command line will exit the program just like it does any other shell.
With all due respect, what other information would you like? And how more obvious could it be?
I agree that quitting isn't obvious if you don't think of it as a shell AND if you don't have your F-keys properly defined in your xterm or ssh client, b
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Re:"inability to specify ssh connection port" (Score:5, Insightful)
I've spent quite a bit of time on Digg, and I can tell you that Digg is not a technology site. It's a social networking site where users share the latest and greatest information in whatever area suites their fancy. As Slashdot's tagline "News for Nerds" suggests, Slashdot is for nerds. Midnight Commander news is certainly nerdy and therefore on topic.
Furthermore, the "Stuff that matters" part is intended to assure that Slashdot news won't be quite a banal as Digg's news. Digg users may care that user X just managed to get a four day old story to "pop", but the world outside of Digg's user-networks really doesn't care.
So with all respect intended, your complaints are duly noted and ignored. Now get off my lawn, ya' darn kids!
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How about a "Top 5 greatest Linux file managers that you should use" with full res HD 1080p screenshot per page with a stupid concl-... er...
*Ducks and runs*
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I was using MC just two days ago for moving a bunch of files around. Sure you can use commandline stuff for a few files, but if you're working with a large number of files, like I was, MC was the easiest way to do it.
I've yet to find a graphical file manager in Linux I actually like.
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Krusader is the best commander like gui for Linux. Give it a shot.
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Re:bleh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:bleh. (Score:5, Insightful)
The cp command doesn't allow for the arbitrary point-and-shoot selection of files to copy, and it also doesn't have some of the more useful related functionality (e.g., directory comparison) that I use all the time in mc.
It's an *addition* to the standard admin toolset, not a replacement. IMO.
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Any admin who judges current software based on dim memories of 10-year-old incarnations needs to get out a little and breathe the flowery air of fresh software development. :-)
Seriously. I've been using it on multiple platforms for close to a decade now, and I'm not sure I can remember it misplacing anything. Without my accidentally telling it to, anyway... These computer thingies are so literal. :-) :-)
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I was recently asked to setup several prototypes (Moodle, eGroupware and eTicket) at work. After a week or so, Moodle migrated to a VM down at county office and Joomla was installed as a front end for the other two. A week later, my desktop (iMac) was pulled away (I work for a school district, it happens), so I'm now based off my dev box -- first thing I did was install Xorg, WMII, GPM and MC. Everything I need for a "desktop" environment in a place where no sane desktop environmen
Re:Midnight Commander should die (Score:4, Interesting)
The choice of tools that one has is rarely an either/or choice.
That's why I tend to write a mix of shell scripts, Perl, and C code depending on the task at hand.
It's also why I sometimes use Midnight Commander to perform tasks which I could also manage using other (and often simpler) tools. Sometimes file copies in the morning go astray -- I find this happens less often when I use a tool which explicitly shows me the destination. Sometimes using a color-coded editor is nice when my eyes are tired and I'm not on a server which has vim installed (that means most of them here).
It's Windows mentality to assume that there's only one solution for the job, it's not UNIX mentality. :-)
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While MC is by far the best file manager on Linux (and a very handy text editor too), you don't really need it in Windows.
Total Commander [ghisler.com] is much better in that environment. And while it is not Free, you can still use it for free if you accept an additional click when starting it. I have bought 3 licenses for my home machines, but use it constantly on all my client's machines in it's non-paid incarnation. The little nag screen really doesn't bother me.
The OS which is most lacking in this regard is actually
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character set problems? If you use PuTTY, try settings in the Window->Appearance and Window->Translation pages.