One of the things I have a tendency to do is save licence key – web confirmation pages to a pdf by printing. It gives a good capture of the document and saves me from actually having another paper to find a place to file. But, ubuntu (dapper) doesn’t seem to be setup for pdf printing by default. Fortunately, it’s not too hard to set up…. install cups-pdf (apt-get install cups-pdf), navigate to System -> Administration -> Printing and doubleclick to add a new printer… no pdf printer is detected… there must be work to do (click cancel). As root (“sudo nautilus”) navigate to Filesystem, then /usr/lib/cups/backend – right click cups-pdf and select properties and check “set user id”. Now, try to add a printer again and you should see PDF Printer, add it with the Generic, Postscript Color Printer (Rev 3b) driver, name it PDF-printer or something like that and now you should have PDF’s dropped into a folder in your home directory named PDF.
Category: Linux Software
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Linux software raid notes
Here are a few other notes on linux software raid. I created a directory called raidinfo to keep information in to make it easy to maintain the raid array. First… from the software raid howto, I’ve done the following….
sfdisk -d /dev/hda > /raidinfo/partitions.hda
sfdisk -d /dev/hde > /raidinfo/partitions.hdeSo…. I’ve now got a good snapshot of the partitioning data. When I hooked up an external usb drive to add to the array, all I needed to do is this…
sfdisk /dev/sda < /raidinfo/partitions.hda (more…)
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Nxclient into xubuntu box
I like nx server and client, it can really make good use of low bandwidth connections to get a gui link. But, by default it’s quick and easy to setup gnome and kde login sessions within nxclient, but if you’re using xubuntu then you will need to setup a “custom” session and the command is startxfce4 …. so, start up nxclient, click configure and on the General tab, halfway down it should say Desktop, leave Unix and change KDE to custom, then click settings and check “run the following command” now, type startxfce4 and you should be set.
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Lightscribe writing under linux
Lacie has released a tool to write the back of cds using HP’s lightscribe technology under linux. I seem to recall there being a possibility of future support in k3b, but I don’t think that has been done yet. From what I remember about lightscribe is that it would require that you buy specially made cds that support being written using lightscribe. They were a bit more expensive than a standard cdr, but it is an impressive effect.
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Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10 out…
The newest Ubuntu (K/X/Edu as well) is out, Edgy Eft 6.10 is finalized and will be supported for 18 months. (Longer support/users seeking stable proven base should stick with Dapper Drake…) One of the biggest changes I can see from reports is the init process replacement. It sounds like they’ve yielded some good bootup improvements and I’m looking forward to downloading and trying it out. I found it interesting to see that the plan for the 7.04 release of Ubuntu is to include native support for Autopackage which is another approach to making “just any” old program trivial to install on any linux variant.
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Cutting Short, splitting or truncating mp3 files…
from the command line in linux… or generating them from Wavs…. So, I’ve got this CD that I’ve made and is up for sale at lulu.com traditional hymns done as “chimes”. I’ve spent quite a bit of time recording to hard drive, editing and getting the wav files as good as possible and I’ve uploaded them, but I also want to make the individual songs available as mp3 downloads too. AND I want to give a preview, either a low quality mp3 of the whole, or a high quality 30 second clip…. Hmmm… how to do it.
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Flash Player 9 for Linux
Now… available in Beta form… The Linux version of the Flash player has been stuck at 7 for some time, while many sites require flash 8 for video/etc… (The page to find the beta download is here.)
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VMware server usb devices not listed on Mandriva host
I’ve been using vmware server quite a bit of course, I’ve mentioned it before. I had never played around with accessing a usb device in the guest environment though. When I tried (host operating system is Mandriva 2006)…. nothing was listed, in spite of several devices being plugged in (and unmounted from the host.) So, I looked around and found that according to this…. that vmware feature requires USBFS to be mounted on /proc/bus/usb …. Some systems that don’t do this by default are…. Ubuntu Linux 6.06, SUSE Linux 10.1, SUSE Enterprise Linux Server 10, Mandriva Linux 2006, SLES9 SP3 64 bit……………. so how do you fix it?
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Firefox 2.0 RC3 out
Baring big problems, the final release candidate for the new 2.0 version of Mozilla Firefox is out reported here and here.
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fdisk Unable to read /dev/sda
The other day I was trying to partition a drive hooked up via usb. (So it get’s /dev/sda as it’s device in linux)… I tried a few utilities to access the partition table and all failed, finally, I resorted to fdisk /dev/sda and was told “unable to read /dev/sda” which I thought was peculiar. The drive had come back in a “warranty replacement” swap for another drive and should have been wiped clean and should have been good as well.