WinSCP transfer modes

Recently I started to use WinSCP instead of SecureFX despite the rumors that latter is four times faster compared to WinSCP. I like WinSCP Internal Text Editor as alternative to VI, because instead of mastering VI editor I prefer to spend time on something else. Only one thing I need to remind myself is to switch to binary transfer mode when copying executable files.

Installing ANT on Windows XP

I found the following quick instruction for installing ANT 1.7.0 on Windows XP.

• Download ANT 1.7.0 from Apache ANT
• Unzip the zip file and put it in some folder (for example c:\ant)
• Set ANT_HOME environment variable to the Ant location
• (MyComputer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Environment Variables -> User Variables for Administrator -> Set New Variable Name as "ANT_HOME" and set New Variable Value as C:\ant)
• Now set Path variable to point to your ANT bin directory (User Variables for Administrator -> Click on Path variable -> Append the ANT bin directory location, say %ANT_HOME%\bin)
• Open a command prompt and type "ant", you should see ANT is working now. In case of any problem try the command to print value of ANT_HOME - echo %ANT_HOME% and see the value for ANT_HOME

I see the big problem here. Let’s say next year a new version of ANT will be released with great improvement or weird bug fixes. What is the owner of manual above is going to do? I think the manual’s writer will just upgrade content of c:/ant/ folder with a new version, but what if new ANT version will be not compatible with already existing ANT script, but in the same time you want to try a new version and migrate your script from ANT 1.7.0 to let’s say ANT 1.8.0. In my case I still use ANT 1.6.5 for a few scripts, but would like to use ANT 1.7.0 for new ones.

I posted my solution for installing ANT 1.7.0 on Windows XP below:

• Download ANT 1.7.0 from Apache ANT
• Unzip the zip file and put it in the version specific folder (for example F:\apps\apache-ant-1.7.0)
• Create batch file setant170.bat with the following content in your usual working folder

@echo off
set ANT_HOME=F:\apps\apache-ant-1.7.0\
set PATH=%PATH%;%ANT_HOME%\bin

• Open a command prompt, navigate to working folder and run setant170.bat
• Start working

Of course as soon as you close the command prompt window you will lose the ANT_HOME value, but is still very convenient, because now you can jump between different versions on ANT without problems. You just need to install a new ANT release and create one more batch file.

Any comments?

IIS 6.0 does not serve files with .docx extension

Today, our support team got the ticket from the customer that one of our online applications does not seem to recognize the .docx extension. The client was able to upload files to the system, but was not capable to open them from web application. I tried by myself and when I request a file with .docx extension from an application served from IIS 6.0, I receive the following error message "HTTP Error 404 - File or directory not found", even though the file is there.

The solution came from Microsoft's article found with Google search IIS 6.0 does not serve unknown MIME types. Based on Microsoft's approach I compiled together as few steps to resolve the issue as fast as possible:

1. Open the IIS Microsoft Management Console (MMC), right-click computer name, and then click Properties.
2. Click MIME Types.
3. Click New.
4. In the Extension box, type .docx
5. In the MIME Type box, type application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
6. Apply the new settings
7. Recycle application pool.