Blogspot problems

I was surprised to find problems in loading any blog on blogspot.com this morning. Occasional problems are present but even in the evening it was not loading and searched to see if there was a problem reported. Instead I found this http://www.labnol.org/india/blogspot-blogs-inaccessible/18670/ and found that the following suggestion in the post  worked!

http://sethanil.blogspot.com.nyud.net 
Publish Post

Wonder why? 

Another case for Rolling distribution

While it is nice to read a news item like  "Asus will preload Ubuntu Linux on three Eee PCs", statements like the following cause a discordant note:

"The only question left is Asus' decision to ship Ubuntu 10.10 although Ubuntu 11.04 came out back in April."

In the case of open source, the users get to try the software before the vendors get around to it. Hence, rolling distributions are ideal. The vendor-supported OS will not be obsolete from the perspective advanced users and, worse, trade press, which will influence the non-tech consumers.

I wish some vendor would latch on to Arch Linux :)

Fedora 15, CUPS - Why does Canon LBP2900B behave so erratically?

I installed a Canon LBP2900B printer and discovered that the drivers are not included in Fedora. It was easy to get them from http://support-asia.canon-asia.com/contents/ASIA/EN/0900772407.html.

The printer worked but after a reboot, the printer did not seem to work. CUPS insisted on creating an additional LBP2900-2 printer for device usb://Canon/LBP2900, while the correct LBP2900 was on device ccp://localhost:59687.

Ignoring all the false steps, the problem would be overcome by stopping the ccpd server and restarting it.

It took a number of reboots and installing it on Ubuntu 11.04 as well to identify that while the additional entry for the same printer by CUPS was confusing, it was harmless.

The real problem was that /etc/init.d/ccpd service should have two processes. On Fedora 15, it was having only one. However, when I stopped the service and restarted it, it would start correctly with two processes:

$ sudo systemctl status ccpd.service
ccpd.service - LSB: Start Canon Printer Daemon for CUPS
      Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/ccpd)
      Active: active (running) since Fri, 03 Jun 2011 09:56:52 +0530; 11min ago
     Process: 5681 ExecStop=/etc/rc.d/init.d/ccpd stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
     Process: 5693 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/ccpd start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Main PID: 5698 (ccpd)
      CGroup: name=systemd:/system/ccpd.service
          ├ 5698 /usr/sbin/ccpd
          ├ 5702 /usr/sbin/ccpd
          └ 5703 captmon2 --data-write-fd=8 --data-read-fd=12 --cmd...

The issue appears to be somehow related to systemd starting services in parallel. The ccpd server probably expects some service to be running which has not yet started.
 

Enabling the brcm80211 driver in Fedora 15

[Update: As pointed out by Dean Brettle and, subsequently, by AM in the comments, rpmfusion added the kmod-staging package. The steps below may be useful if I ever need to compile a single module again.]

The driver for the wireless on the Lenovo S10-3 is included in the staging directory of the kernel. Fedora 15, unfortunately, did not enable it and wl.kmod or brcm80211.kmod were not available from rpmfusion repository either.

So, the best option was to download the source and enable it. The instructions to download the source of the kernel and prepare the source tree were available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/CustomKernel. The kernel source was now in the rpmbuild/BUILD/kernel-2.6.38.fc15/ directory.

The following steps helped to build only the desired module

1. Modify the .config file to include
   CONFIG_BRCM80211=m
2. Make sure that the following details in Makefile are as per the running kernel, e.g.
   VERSION = 2
   PATCHLEVEL = 6
   SUBLEVEL = 38
   EXTRAVERSION = .6-27.fc15.x86_64
3. Run the command
   $ make drivers/staging/brcm80211
   This step prompted me to enable the additional option -
   CONFIG_BRCM80211_PCI=y
4. $ make M=drivers/staging/brcm80211/
5. $ sudo make modules_install M=drivers/staging/brcm80211/
6. Looking at the OpenSuse's /lib/firmware/brcm, I created two softlinks:
   $ sudo ln -s bcm43xx-0-610-809-0.fw bcm43xx-0.fw
   $ sudo ln -s bcm43xx_hdr-0-610-809-0.fw bcm43xx_hdr-0.fw
7. Add the driver:
   $ sudo modprobe brcm80211

The wifi card was now recognised and working. It took just a few minutes instead of hours for compiling the full kernel - even if it took a few days to understand and reach this point!

Notes:

• If step 2 was not done, modprobe failed to load brcm80211 - invalid module format. The log reported a more meaningful problem - version magic mismatch and the driver was unloaded.

• If step 6 was not done, the driver was loaded but the log reported an error that failed to find firmware /lib/firmware/brcm/bcm43xx-0.fw.

• While searching (unsuccessfully) for an explanation for why steps 3 and 4 were needed, I came across a somewhat different way to compile just one module - http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/640.

Fedora 15 Upgrade - NetworkManager and rsyslog need to be enabled

The NetworkManager and rsyslog services were failing to start after the upgrade of the systems from Fedora 14. The workaround was working so well that I did not get around to looking into the issue till today.

A quick search for the error:

Unit dbus-org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.service failed to load: 
No such file or directory.

The solution appeared to be that I needed to enable the service:

$sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

It created symlinks in /etc/systemd/system and /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/ folders.

Since this was likely to be the solution, I also tried

$sudo systemctl enable rsyslog.service

This also created a symlink in /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/.

I removed the workaround script in /etc/rc.local. As expected, the system worked fine.

If I come across any more services which fail to start at boot time, e.g. nfs, I know what to try first.

I am, though, still curious - why is the ethernet device still eth0!

LibreOffice Page Style - Not a bug, works as intended :(

I had used page styles several years ago in OpenOffice. I must have followed a tutorial because I do not remember having a miserable time of it.

Yesterday, I decided to rely on what seemed obvious. Since the obvious did not work, I thought that LibreOffice had  introduced a bug. This is what I thought was obviously buggy:

• Take a document with more than 3 pages. Insert a manual break (Ctrl+Enter) before the last page.
• First try: Go to the last page, use "Styles and Formatting", select Page Styles and apply Landscape style. ALL pages in the document now had Landscape style. Not what I intended.
• Second try: Go to last but one page. Choose Format -> Page option. Change the Next Style to Landscape. Now the first page remains Default but all the other pages are Landscape! Also, not what I intended.

Next, I searched for bugs on Page Style and then for tutorials on Page Style for OpenOffice.

The solution was simple. One has to use Insert -> Manual Break (and not Ctrl+Enter). This gives an option to specify the page style to be chosen for the next page. An explanation of how to use page styles for self-publishing may be seen here.

So far this is the only case where OpenOffice/LibreOffice GUI has left me thoroughly confused and very dissatisfied.

Will my 82 year old mom be able to handle Gnome 3?

As I had been expecting, Arch Linux update now includes Gnome 3. I updated my Lenovo netbook first and tried Gnome 3 though I am normally using KDE Plasma Netbook profile.

My initial reaction was, "Oh, no! I will no longer be able to keep my mom's computer current." There was no way that I could get my 82 year old mom to use the empty screen. My experiment with a rolling distribution was about to end.

On Arch Linux, the classic Gnome display was shown - nearly blank panels and no desktop. It was easy to fix the classic Gnome issue as I needed to install gnome-shell.

Now, I had a blank desktop with the Activities action only. There was no way I could inflict the mouse movements needed to get an app to run on my mother. Had the favourites been always visible as in Ubuntu's Unity display, I may have considered that option.

I would have to use the Gnome classic display for her. I should be able to get her accustomed to two panels. For many years, her desktop is configured to use only one panel at the bottom. An alternate option would be configure KDE plasma to look like her current environment. My mother's needs are very simple and few. She uses Thunderbird for email, Rhythmbox for playing music and AisleRiot to play Freecell. Occasionally, she may use Firefox, OpenOffice or Image Viewer if somene has sent a link or an attachment. (In the case of attachments, she now often needs our help.)

It is unfortunate that I needed to use gnome-tweak-tool to get the file manager to manage the desktop. Given the controversy KDE4 developers had faced, I would have expected that this option would have been enabled by default.

Suddenly, Gnome 3 looked much closer to the familiar environment.

The classic Gnome did not seem to have a 'favorites' dock. A little playing around led to the discovery that I could drag a menu item to either panel. Now, the desktop is far closer to the familiar. I can add a script to shutdown the system so that she is not confused by the status menu or, even the alternate status menu.

So, in principle, I can continue with the experiment. But I will save the current setup in a partition so that I can fall back to it in case my expectations are belied.

I still have to consider whether to stick to Gnome or switch. LXDE may be the best option if I can customise the theme for large fonts, high contrast which are needed for my mother to be able to read emails with greater ease. But in all my efforts, I have to make sure that I do not frustrate her.

It is going to be a tough call!  Drop the experiment and stick to what works or take a chance with one of the three options. Which one? Decision taking is hard :(