Recently in CUPS Category

After planning for weeks to take my main production laptop from OpenBSD 4.4 to 4.5, I sweated through the upgrade only to lose what was perfect X compatibility and pull the "kill switch," which in this case was transferring everything in my freshly rsync'd backup to my identical Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, a system I've been running for quite awhile on this and another laptop — and which has thus far proven itself to be stable enough for the pounding I give these machines in my daily work.

OpenBSD 4.4 basically "saved" me and one of these marginal Toshiba laptops (both were destined for the garbage) last November when I could barely get an install CD of any type to boot. The install floppy in OpenBSD enabled me to quickly set up a system that worked quite well and did almost everything I needed it to do. And stability was almost a given. I rarely had a problem that wasn't inherent to OpenBSD itself (such as the difficulty of installing Java, nothing past Flash Player 7, the extra steps required to properly configure things such as CUPS).

Since the system ran so well — just like Ubuntu 8.04, video on this Intel-based system ran perfectly with no xorg.conf — I kept it going for the entire six months of the OpenBSD 4.4 release's life.

As those who use OpenBSD know, upgrading the operating system is not as easy as it is in your average Linux distribution. It pretty much comes with the territory that a -release upgrade requires preparation, following instructions, and a bit of manual command-line work. Many times I've heard — both in OpenBSD and in Linux for that matter — that it's easier and cleaner to do a full reinstall rather than an in-place upgrade.

I will still try a full reinstall of OpenBSD 4.5. And I'd like to try running -current — the OpenBSD development branch that can be regularly updated and which is famously stable despite the "development" tag.

But right here, right now, I can't spend weeks diagnosing my X issues (briefly, there's some funky junk hanging from the cursor, and "artifacts" linger on the screen, which isn't redrawn fast enough/often enough to make X usable). The same thing turned me away from Debian Lenny on this and my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop in the months before the then-Testing distro went Stable. Because of my affection for Debian (still one of my very favorite operating systems), I spent weeks trying to diagnose the problem before realizing that dozens of other distros relieved me of the need to obsess (unsuccessfully) over it.

Right now the Gateway, used by our 5-year-old dual-boots Ubuntu 8.04 for her and CentOS 5.3 just because it runs so extremely well on that particular laptop.

And for months now I've had this other Toshiba laptop running Ubuntu 8.04 as a backup. I have Java installed, which I do need. Flash, too. The Opera Web browser.

Today I added Inkscape, Thunderbird, gFTP and Gparted.

On the OpenBSD laptop, I had about 1 GB of e-mail in Thunderbird. It makes rsyncing the box such hell that I'm thinking of writing a script that EXCLUDES the Thunderbird files just so the rest of the backup doesn't take so damn long ... but I digress.

I figured out how to bring my Thunderbird settings and mail over to the Ubuntu machine. I did the same with my Firefox bookmarks.

-- Begin tutorial:

Moving bookmarks from one Firefox 3 installation to another:

• Since Firefox now uses the SQlite database to store/organize its bookmarks, simply moving the bookmarks.html file from one Firefox 3 installation to another will DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. You need to do it another way, which I describe right here. First, grab the bookmarks.html file from your old FF installation and put it somewhere in your /home directory where you can easily find it.

• In the Firefox 3.0 installation where you want to IMPORT the bookmarks, go to the Bookmarks tab and click on/choose Organize Bookmarks.

• Click on the Import and Backup drop-down menu and click Import HTML.

• Then navigate to the bookmarks.html file from your old FF 3 installation (you have moved it over already, haven't you?) and click it to bring it into your new installation.

• Note: In Ubuntu at least, this process WON'T allow you to see hidden files or directories, so before you begin, copy your old bookmarks.html file to a place in your home directory where you don't need to go into your old installation's .mozilla directory, for instance.

• FYI: In both of my Firefox 3 installations, the bookmarks.html file is located here:

  /home/username/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/bookmarks.html

  In the above example, "username" is your actual username, and the eight x's are the unique alphanumeric prefix that Firefox gives to your "default" directory under /.mozilla/firefox/
  

-- End tutorial.

-- Resume rant.

OK, so I'm fully operational in Ubuntu at this point. My respect and admiration for the developers and users of OpenBSD remains, and I hope to get the other Toshiba fully operational under OpenBSD 4.5 as soon as possible.

But I'd be lying if I didn't say I was relieved to have, in Ubuntu, a machine and system that easily updates all of its software with a few clicks and provides me with what — at this point — is a trouble-free working environment.

Of course that could all change. I'll see over the next week how well Ubuntu 8.04 LTS performs on this hardware, with my chosen applications and for the tasks I have.

I could start the distro-hopping merry-go-round and go back to Debian, try out Slackware, ZenWalk, etc., but right now if Linux in this form does what I need it to do (not crash, run acceptably fast, wash, rinse, repeat), I'll be sticking with Ubuntu as long as it fills the bill.

When I set up an OpenBSD box, I generally use CUPS — the Common Unix Printing System.

I've had pretty good luck with CUPS and OpenBSD, even though it can be a bit more hacky than usual to get your printers and PCs to come to an agreement and actually print something.

The last time I set up CUPS printing was with OpenBSD 4.4 on my Toshiba Satellite 1101-S101 laptop (the best OpenBSD platform I've had the pleasure of using, by the way).

I had already set up this OpenBSD install to pull packages from my local FTP mirror, after which I installed CUPS using pkg_add.

I can't clearly remember whether or not the install script automatically modified /etc/rc.local to launch the CUPS daemon at boot, but if it didn't the script at least told me what to put in that configuration file to get CUPS going.

The only "local daemon" I'm using is cupsd. Here's what my /etc/rc.local looked like at first:

# $OpenBSD: rc.local,v 1.39 2006/07/28 20:19:46 sturm Exp $

# Site-specific startup actions, daemons, and other things which
# can be done AFTER your system goes into securemode. For actions
# which should be done BEFORE your system has gone into securemode
# please see /etc/rc.securelevel.

echo -n 'starting local daemons:'

# Add your local startup actions here.

if [ -x /usr/local/sbin/cupsd ]; then
echo -n ' cupsd'; /usr/local/sbin/cupsd
fi

echo '.'

CUPS worked. I was able to set up networked printers both at home and at the office.

But during the boot sequence for OpenBSD, the machine would take a few minutes to load cupsd. A check of the script above shows that /usr/local/sbin/cupsd is not running in the background.

I used the & switch to change that. Here's what /etc/rc.local looks like now:

# $OpenBSD: rc.local,v 1.39 2006/07/28 20:19:46 sturm Exp $

# Site-specific startup actions, daemons, and other things which
# can be done AFTER your system goes into securemode. For actions
# which should be done BEFORE your system has gone into securemode
# please see /etc/rc.securelevel.

echo -n 'starting local daemons:'

# Add your local startup actions here.

if [ -x /usr/local/sbin/cupsd ]; then
echo -n ' cupsd'; /usr/local/sbin/cupsd &
fi

echo '.'

See the &? That allows cupsd to load in the background, and now when I start up OpenBSD, I don't have to wait for the CUPS server to start up before getting to a login prompt.

There couldn't be an easier hack to make OpenBSD run better.

Maybe you're curious about how The Self-Reliant Thin Client is doing.

Here's the uptime output:

steven@maxterm:~$ uptime
13:08:07 up 24 days, 21:15, 2 users, load average: 1.70, 1.32, 1.31

Yep, the VIA C3 Samuel (rated at 1 GHz but running in Linux at 500 MHz for some reason) based converted thin client, running Debian Etch from an 8 GB Compact Flash card, has been working continuously for about a month now (I did reboot a few times during this test for kernel updates).

It's still no speed demon but handles the GNOME desktop fairly well. I did add Fluxbox for testing purposes, and I also installed the lightweight Dillo Web browser, but I'm still relying on the Iceweasel (unbranded Firefox) and Epiphany (GNOME's Gecko build) browsers, plus OpenOffice 2.0 Writer (works surprisingly well, even with 256 MB of RAM and 500 MHz of CPU) and GNOME's GEdit text editor.

I even used CUPS (The Common Unix Printing System) to set up a printer the other day. Even though most systems include native printer-setup utilities (GNOME's is extremely primitive), I find it's both easier and more instructive to use CUPS directly via a Web browser. For those who have never done it, open a browser and go to the following URL to access the CUPS interface:

http://localhost:631

I usually click on Administration and go from there. If you're asked for a login, that login is generally root, with the password being root's password. I can't remember how this goes in Ubuntu, which doesn't let the users (even the main user) at the root password (if there even is such a password).

Ubuntu's root/sudo situation is another kettle of fish for another post, but for most of us, the key to CUPS is using the root login and password to add or modify printers.

I will close out this entry by praising Debian Etch for being so solid on this (and just about every other) platform.

OpenBSD doesn't use the CUPS printing system by default, and while I've been successful in using Apsfilter in Damn Small Linux (but not in Debian), now that I've figured out all the quirks in CUPS and my office network-printing situation, I prefer to use CUPS to manage the many network printers at my disposal.

OpenBSD tip: Whenever installing software in OpenBSD, it's a good idea to save whatever messages the system prints on the terminal screen for later reference. Nowhere is this more important than in the installation of CUPS, which requires a bit more user intervention than I've experienced before. Who am I kidding? I've never installed CUPS before in my life -- it's always "there."

Anyhow, back to OpenBSD and CUPS. As is always the case, you need to use sudo or su to root to install CUPS:

$ sudo pkg_add -i cups
(enter password when prompted)

or

$ su
(enter password when prompted)
# pkg_add -i cups

The system then kicks out the following:

To enable CUPS, execute '/usr/local/sbin/cups-enable' as root To disable CUPS, execute '/usr/local/sbin/cups-disable' as root

Starting cupsd will overwrite /etc/printcap. A backup copy of this file is saved as /etc/printcal.pre-cups by '/usr/local/sbin/cups-enable' and will be restored when you run '/usr/local/sbin/cups-disable'

As I said above, SAVE THIS IN A FILE. You might need it.

This is not enough to get CUPS going. You must do this as root (or, again, with sudo):

# /usr/local/sbin/cupsd

Now you can open a browser (in X, I used Firefox, but I think you can even use Lynx in a console), go to http://localhost:631 and configure your printer(s) as usual. Since everybody's situation is different, I'll leave instructions for the rest of CUPS up to you, except for one thing:

In OpenBSD, chances are you will need to find the right driver for your printer. I went to the CUPS Web site, more specifically to the Printer Drivers page, found the driver for my printer (an HP Laserjet 2100, if you must know), downloaded it and used it when configuring my printer in CUPS.

That's not all. By default, OpenBSD doesn't tell your system to automatically start the CUPS server at boot. I'm sure there's a more correct way to do this, but I added the following line to /etc/rc.local (again, you must do this as root or with sudo):

/usr/local/sbin/cupsd

Looks familiar, doesn't it? It's the same way we started CUPS in the first place. And now it'll start without any intervention by you on your next boot.

By the way, with CUPS controlling my printing, I can both print in X and from a console. Just use the old lpr command (with the name of the file you'd like to print):

$ lpr filename

Your file will print to your default printer. You can also specify a specific printer, print a certain number of copies, and do all sorts of other clever things at the command line.

NetBSD: While I'm having a lot of fun working with OpenBSD, I'm itching to repeat all of this with NetBSD. I didn't expect the NetBSD Live CD to run on my Compaq Armada laptop, what with the CD using KDE and the laptop only having 64 MB of RAM, but after a lengthy booting process, I did get to a console in NetBSD from the live CD, and wireless networking on my trusty Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA card worked out of the box.

But the laptop's doing so well with Debian Etch, I'm wary of making any change. Still, I might keep my data in a Linux partition, wipe off Debian for now and give some other things a try. I can always reinstall Debian if that's the way things go.

As far as my converted thin client test box that's now running OpenBSD, of its three hard drives (any of which can be easily plugged in to run different OSes at any time), I've got one drive that I use mainly for Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, and another one with Xubuntu 7.04, Slackware 12 and Puppy 2.17 that I use rarely. That will probably become the NetBSD test bed at some near-future time.

Again, why? In case you missed the last time I answered this question, I'm playing around with the BSDs so much ... because they're there. Just as I don't think it's a great idea for everybody to just run Windows, it's also not such a great idea for the free, open-source software world to be about Linux and nothing else. Even if there are 300 Linux distributions out there, there's only one Linux kernel (albeit in many, many versions). The BSD operating systems are developed differently, and while FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and, yes, DragonflyBSD (sorry I haven't mentioned that one until now) all have specialized uses, there's plenty of software available -- at least in FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD -- to run them as any kind of server as well as a fully functioning desktop computer.

And while the FreeBSD project has spawned PC-BSD and DesktopBSD on the desktop (the last one's pretty obviously aimed that way, given the word "desktop" in its name ... but I digress), there's no reason these other operating systems shouldn't be tested, used and enjoyed in the same manner.

Yours in operating-system diversity,

s.

... but wait, there's more:

Interesting blog: Larry the Free Software Guy is looking at "Eight Distros a Week." I went quite far back into his blog, and I plan to return often.

Take once a day: You might have noticed that Click is now publishing once a day, usually at 5 a.m. Pacific time. Rather than pushing out five entries on some days, even more -- or none -- on others, I'm trying to get ahead of myself a bit and make this blog more predictable for both me and you. If "breaking news" intervenes and I have something to say about it, I'll post during the day, but for now, look for a new entry at every morning at 5 a.m. Pacific. And no, I'm not awake that early -- the magic of Movable Type enables me to schedule posts to appear at any time in the future.

I did two things today: First, I set up printing with CUPS. I never had trouble with Puppy's pre-CUPS printer-configuration program, but since I've learned enough of CUPS to find my sometimes-hard-to-find network printer (one of about 20 in the vicinity), I'm generally a happy CUPS camper.

There was one problem, however. CUPS asked me for a password. I get the same query when adding this same network printer in Ubuntu, but I enter my login and password and move forward. But Puppy runs in the root account. So what's root's password? I couldn't figure it out. It wasn't nothing, not "root," not "toor." The Puppy forums told me to change root's password:

# passwd root

And then I typed in my usual password. I went back to CUPS started adding the printer, used the new root password ... and it worked.

Remember though, for most normal printers, they'll already be preconfigured in CUPS and you won't have to do any of this.

Then I decided to give Gnumeric a try. I can barely use a spreadsheet at all. I just don't have the occasion to do so, although knowing how to create one would probably be of some use.

The one thing I do with spreadsheets is get them from Web sites. Nielsen Media Research distributes TV ratings via Excel spreadsheets on their Web site (you need to be a registered user, which I am). I could never print one of these things out in OpenOffice -- I always get one line per page, meaning the job would be about 200 pages if I didn't kill it before it ran through half a ream of paper.

Well, I went to the page, clicked on the .xls document, and it opened just right in Gnumeric.

And then I went to print it. The first printout cut off one side of the spreadsheeet just a bit. But the whole damn thing printed out on four landscape pages (8 1/2 x 11 size). So I went into the Gnumeric printer settings, told the program to center the spreadsheet and did a print preview. Then I printed it for real. Looks great.

Not a huge deal, but I got printing set up and was able to read and print an Excel spreadsheet, and I'm happy enough.

Today's Puppy "free memory": 113 MB