More Experience on Canon LBP2900B

I have found a few workarounds by which the Canon LBP2900B works reasonably.

• On Fedora 15, we need to restart the ccpd after it has booted
• $ sudo systemctl restart ccpd.service
• If the printer is out of paper, the print job is stuck. 
• The button on the printer seems to have no effect
• Cancel the print job
• Enable/resume the printer
• Printing from some applications fails (e.g.printing an image, Adobe's Document Viewer). Workaround was:
• Print to a pdf file
• Print the pdf file using a Linux application(evince or okular)

OOPS - I got a Canon LiDE 110 Scanner

It was stupid of me. I bought a Canon LiDE 110 scanner and did not bother to check whether it was supported on Linux. I felt very foolish when I plugged it in and it did not get recognized.

Fortunately, Google helped me find the status and the issues for this model and the status of drivers available in the git repository.

Then, it was a matter finding some nice people who had already written the installation instructions - Ubuntu and Fedora

It works well. Now I have to see the best way to scan old photos and convert them to digital before they fade.

Update 14 May 2012: The Canon LiDE 110 works out of the box on Ubuntu and Arch Linux but for some reason not on Fedora 16 though it is reported to work on Fedora 17. I could build and install the sane-backends using the source from Sane project site and it works.

Public Service or Stubborn Stupidity?

I tried to open an online trading account today as I now need to sell some shares occasionally. I want to avoid the paperwork - and, even more, the parking hassles associated with the paperwork. I wound up advising the representatives of the trading company and my bank where I have the demat accounts about the need for them to support Firefox or Chrome on Linux.

The transactions are only assured on Windows XP with IE6! Some people had problems even with IE7 and IE8. Needless to say, I did not take the account. Had it been free, I would have tried it and given them unwanted feedback :(

System Insists on Rebooting, Ignores Shutdown request!

My mother was patiently waiting for me to start her computer. Actually, the monitor was off but the computer was on. My sister had a problem shutting down the system last night as it insisted on rebooting! So, she had just left it on and powered off the monitor.

Needless to say, my sister was offended when I suggested that she may have clicked in the wrong location. Well, I too failed to get the system to shutdown. And jumped to the conclusion that upgrading to Arch Linux kernel 2.6.36 must be the culprit. It was a coincidence.

The system refuses to shutdown even on the alternate Fedora 12 still installed on the same system. The workaround is to choose the Hibernate option.

I suppose it's time that I get my mother a new computer!

Update: The problem is resolved but the cause was strange. There was a thumb drive attached to the system. I removed the thumb drive and the system shut down gracefully.

Keyboad Interface - CTOS like options instead of short cut keys

I loved the Convergent's CTOS (Burroughs BTOS). The last time I used it was about 20 years ago - I would have been in my early 40's. As Ishiguro's novels show, memories are a very strange phenomena!

Still, I think a user interface modelled on CTOS on Linux would be very desirable for people who have problems with mouse - which includes a very large population - the aging group. Unfortunately, this is also the group which can't scratch its own itch :(

The features I think would be very useful:

1. Extensive use of function keys. Short cut keys do not need to be fixed. There is no need for each operation to be uniquely mapped to a key combination. Operations available could be mapped to the function keys based on the state of a document/application. This is quite similar to the options which are often available on right click of a mouse. A panel could dynamically display the function keys with labels of operations which were available.

2. Mark and Bound. The Mark key was used to set up a marker. Cursor could be moved around. When the desired destination was reached, Bound key was pressed and the content between Mark and Bound was selected. This becomes equivalent to a 'pick'. An operation like move, copy and delete can be done on that. Move and copy would expect that the cursor to be in the target position. This becomes equivalent to a 'drop'. Since a standard keyboard will not have a 'Mark' and 'Bound' key, function keys could be assigned to that role as described above.

I wish I could remember the number of times my father called in Goa regarding missing documents. He would press ctrl-A instead of shift-A and continue typing. By the time he would phone me, he had made closed and reopened the document and I could not help him over the phone.

He would have spent hours painstakingly typing a document and it would disappear. I never did figure out how to get rid of ctrl-A on Windows98.

Mouse - Click to Move

I had switched my parents to Fedora 4 years ago when I moved to Delhi area from Goa. One application from Windows98 remained - Freecell. My mother loved to play it and she just could not use drag and drop functionality. She has Parkinson's disease.

Then, after an update, I noticed 'Click to Move' option in AisleRiot. Had I missed it earlier or was it a new feature - I don't know. But after that, even Windows' freecell lost its place on the computer.

The reason I recalled this incident was that I was finding it extremely hard to use drag and drop on Kpat on the Lenovo netbook using the touch pad. Some operations with mouse can be very-very difficult as we age. KDE4.5 has more keyboard short cuts so I found that to play Kpat, I could use them. Not the best of solutions but a workable solution. An option for 'pick and drop' as an alternate to 'drag and drop' would have been very useful.

Sadly, keyboard shortcuts are just that. They are not very useful for older people who may have problem with mouse as well as remembering which key does what in which application.

Weird Keyboard Malfunction

It was a weird experience. I was working on Arch Linux in a VM( Sun VirtualBox) in a remote X session from a thin client. Suddenly, the keyboard seemed to have stopped working. Function and control keys seemed to work partially. But normal keys were totally ignored. Ctrl-alt-Fn also did not behave correctly.

I naturally assumed that the VM must have caused the problem.

I rebooted the thin client - same behaviour. I switched from LXDE to Gnome. Same behaviour. Rebooted the main machine - still the same scene.

The same user worked fine on the main system; however, I realised later that the desktop was KDE.

I then tried KDE and keys worked fine.

I assumed that I must have updated some package which caused the problem. But the last update was four days ago. Hence, that was not a likely cause. Also, I could use the gnome desktop using an alternate account.

After quite a bit of struggle, I found the problem to be related to SCIM. I must have pressed some short-cut keys which caused the keyboard to seem to be abnormal! At least, I assume so because after using the input pad with the mouse and exiting from SCIM, the keyboard has been working fine.

Hopefully, I will find time to reproduce the problem and add an update to this post.

Importance of DIY

Squid wouldn't start after rebooting. Seemed strange - missing files and directories.

And then it struck me. After installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix, I had optimised the installation and changed /var/log /tmp to temp file systems! Squid wouldn't start because it needed /var/log/squid. So, the problem could be resolved very quickly.

I am finding that I now understand Fedora and Ubuntu distributions better after working with Arch Linux!

Replicating Arch Linux

I had frequently taken a backup of the root partition, restored it on another system and it would work, with some minor changes to the fstab file. I decided to replicate Arch Linux the same way.

I took a backup of the functioning system in Chandigarh and brought it to Goa. Restored it, made the minimal changes in grub.conf and fstab - and Surprise. The kernel crashed. The problem seemed simple enough.

Chroot to the Arch Linux partition. Reinstall the kernel. Reboot and getting ready to relax with a cup of tea. No luck. Kernel crashed again and again.

Installed the core Arch Linux from a usb image. This time the system worked!

Next step - saved the kernel and the image. Restored the tar backup. Copied the installed kernel and the image. The system worked! Reinstalled the updated kernel (2.6.32) and the system still worked.

I used the EEPC701 as the gateway to connect to the Internet and started to add some packages, e.g. NetworkManager to use the Reliance Netconnect USB modem. Pacman complained. I chose to ignore the warnings and forced the additional packages. And the system stopped working. I was back to kernel crashes.

I had to look at how the packages were stored and realised the issue. Arch Linux keeps installed and available packages as directories and files. Restoring the tar backup resulted in updated and original packages both being listed. It resulted in a very confused package manager.

So, back to installing from the USB drive. This time I removed the package manager 'database', that is the directories in /var/lib/pacman. Now the restored package database was consistent. The system has been working fine.

I have to re-examine the tar backup. I must have missed something.

Arch Linux for Parents

My parents are over 80 years old and have routine needs. I switched them to Linux after moving to Chandigarh 3 years ago. The problems they have faced have been fewer than they faced with Windows. Partly because many of their problems were related to dial up connection failing whereas broadband connection is more reliable. Printing issues are about the same as earlier.

The only reason I had not switched them earlier was because the hardware technicians get nervous with Linux.

I have been updating their system to the new versions of Fedora by updating the fedora release information and then just allowing yum to update the system. However, before updating to Fedora 12, I decided to cleanup some of the old packages. I was not in a hurry as I wanted to wait till the Fedora 12's issues with old intel graphics cards were resolved. Unfortunately, I got into a mess and cleaned up almost everything - including rpm and yum (bug report). So, I had no choice but to reinstall the OS.

I decided to take a risk with Fedora 12 and, as expected, the display and the system would freeze periodically. This was very frustrating/disconcerting for my parents. Hence, I decide to install Arch Linux on their system as well.

The instructions in the Wiki for beginners guide were perfect. Arch Linux was installed fairly quickly but the graphics issues with intel driver were worse. A forum posting guided me to the 5 packages I needed to downgrade. Using pacman for package management was similar to using yum. The names of multimedia packages I needed were known so the installation on Arch Linux was easier.

In order to have the system as close to Fedora 12, I also installed PulseAudio. I had to add the users to audio group to get the sound to work. I haven't had a chance to expore ConsoleKit/PolicyKit to fix the permissions issue.

I copied the Fedora icons and theme and the system looks almost the same whether booted in Arch Linux or Fedora 12. Small tweaks were needed to the desktop icon which started OpenOffice.

I plan to persist and see if I can keep the system current without a major upgrade. But I will definitely miss the delta rpms for updating packages. The key lesson is also that if someone sets up a machine, using any distribution, including one like Arch Linux intended for tech users is not difficult.

Firefox is also moving towards incremental improvements and scrapping version 3.7. I hope Fedora moves soon to a rolling model as well. If Arch Linux can do it, so can Fedora.

Holiday in Goa - Switching to Arch Linux

Overhearing phrases like 'How you did?' in a very pleasing accent makes me feel at home again.

Cab driver drove fast from the airport to Mapusa. The roads seemed nicer. At a few places, the rumblers were replaced by rounded speed breakers.

At night, when I drove, the traffic seemed nicer - more polite. Fewer people honking and fewer headlights on high beam. The addition of reflectors at the edge of the road made driving at night from Panaji to Mapusa more comfortable.

As usual, my first task was to upgrade my old PC in our flat in Mapusa.

The PC has an intel 945 graphics chipset, so the likelihood of the system freezing with Fedora 12 or Ubuntu 9.10 is very high.

Also, this will begin my long experiment with keeping a system used a few times a year current without upgrading the OS again.

I brought a backup of Arch Linux from my parents' system in Chandigarh so that I could be operational very quickly.

It did not turn out to be that way - more about that in a separate post.

Ubuntu 9.10 - Problem with new Releases

I couldn't upgrade my Ubuntu 9.04 installation - the upgrade script wasn't on the desktop-iso I had downloaded. It wasn't critical as I had a free partition and installed Ubuntu 9.10 on that. A lucky move.

My initial reaction was very good. The 1280x1024 resolution of the monitor was not found; however, the desktop was significantly snappier on the 512 MB system. I had been expecting and looking forward to it because of the improvements in 2.6.31.

Then, I noticed that X-server would freeze occasionally. I learnt the Alt-SysRq-k combination instead of the Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. I needed to use it often. After killing the X, the screen would usually be black and I could do nothing. I had to learn the Alt-SysRq-b combination as well!

I tried to find the cause for the X locking up but could not. It may not be just the Intel driver on an old 845 graphics chipset as Google search reports problems on Nvidia and ATI chipsets as well.

By the end of the day, I had gone back to 9.04. Then I decided to copy the 2.6.31 kernel and the modules on to the 9.04 partition. I booted 9.04 with the 2.6.31 kernel from 9.10 and the system was stable for the next half hour till the end of day.

Tomorrow, I will explore that environment further and am hoping that the problem is with X. If so, I will work with the snappier 9.04 unofficial upgrade.

This confirms my view that the current mechanism for distributions is now inappropriate. It is too disruptive and, potentially, very painful.

I will find time to explore a rolling distribution Arch linux or Gentoo. My hesitation so far has been that their repositories may not be as comprehensive as Fedora or Ubuntu. Now the benefits of a rolling distribution outweigh the drawbacks.