My .vimrc

Here's my current .vimrc, mainly built for the MacBook Pro but also used on my Kali machines.

" My vimrc

" Set 'nocompatible' to ward off unexpected things that your distro might
" have made, as well as sanely reset options when re-sourcing .vimrc
:set nocompatible

" Used to install vim modules, docs at https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen
:execute pathogen#infect()

set ts=4 
set shiftwidth=4 
set softtabstop=4
set expandtab 
set visualbell 
set number
set nobackup
set nowritebackup

" Allow backspacing over autoindent, line breaks and start of insert action
set backspace=indent,eol,start

" Enable use of the mouse for all modes
set mouse=a

" highlight current line
set cursorline

" load filetype-specific indent files
filetype indent on

" visual autocomplete for command menu
set wildmenu

" Display the cursor position on the last line of the screen or in the status
" line of a window
set ruler
 
 " Always display the status line, even if only one window is displayed
set laststatus=2
  
" Instead of failing a command because of unsaved changes, instead raise a
" dialogue asking if you wish to save changed files.
set confirm

" Show partial commands in the last line of the screen
set showcmd

" Highlight searches (use  to temporarily turn off highlighting
set hlsearch

" When opening a new line and no filetype-specific indenting is enabled, keep
" the same indent as the line you're currently on. Useful for READMEs, etc.
set autoindent

" Enable syntax highlighting
syntax on

" Colorizations (my custom ones)
":set background=dark
"set background=light
":colorscheme solarized
":colorscheme koehler
":colorscheme vividchalk
":colorscheme distinguished
":colorscheme jellybeans

" stock vim73 colors
":colorscheme blue
":colorscheme darkblue
":colorscheme default
":colorscheme delek
":colorscheme desert
":colorscheme elflord
":colorscheme evening
:colorscheme koehler
":ocolorscheme morning
":colorscheme murphy
":colorscheme pablo
":colorscheme peachpuff
":colorscheme ron
":colorscheme shine
":colorscheme slate
":colorscheme torte
":colorscheme zellner
 
" Remember the last line in the file so we open it there next time
if has("autocmd")
  au BufReadPost * if line("'\"") > 1 && line("'\"") <= line("$") | exe "normal! g'\"" | endif
endif

Kali Linux update script

I've grown tired of typing in all of the commands to properly update my Kali Linux machine so I put this script together. I place all of my personal scripts in $HOME/bin and add that to my .bashrc (PATH="$PATH:$HOME/bin"). Here it is:

#!/bin/bash
#
CMDS="update upgrade autoclean clean autoremove"
SUDO="sudo"
APTCMD="apt-get"
FORCE="-y"

# add any arg to add dist-upgrade
if [ ! -z $1 ]; then
 CMDS="$CMDS dist-upgrade"
 echo "Adding dist-upgrade"
 echo "Remember to reboot after"
fi


for CMD in $CMDS; do
 DO="$SUDO $APTCMD $CMD $FORCE"
 echo ""
 echo "** Running cmd: $DO"
 ${DO}
 if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then
  echo "*** Something bad happened"
 else
  echo "*** Success"
 fi
done

Evolution mail on Kali

Now that I'm running Kali Linux completely on my Dell laptop I need to setup my sort of "standard" desktop environment, I'd like something similar to what I've used on the MacBook Pro for years now.

First up: email. I used the Evolution email app years back when I attempted to go Linux on my desktop and it seemed ok so I'll try it again. The first issue is that my work email is all Exchange.

Start with:

sudo apt-get evolution
sudo apt-get evolution-ews

From what I've read evolution-mapi has been deprecated (good) as Microsoft is moving away from MAPI (finally), so Exchange Web Services is it.

After installing the packages I went looking in the GNOME Applications menu and didn't see anything, note that I didn't see a GNOME post hook during package installation, have to figure out how to add that later. For now, type 'evolution' in a terminal.

It fired up and I selected Exchange Web Services as the type of mail system, passed in the auto-discovery URL (for our OWA front-end), selected NTLM (yuk) as the auth type and it seemed to discover the OAB url and such. After that Evolution started up but I don't see any email in it.

Let's see how to make it work...