Belkin Wireless / Ralink RT61 chipset

Making this Belkin Wireless Notebook G pcmcia card working on my debian system was as easy as a walk in the park. The debian forum had a how-to which used the t2×00 Project. However, the source is now available in the latest kernel – actually from 2.6.24+. It may be somewhat “buggy”, but when I found the firmware source in the debian repository, everything worked smoothly for me.

sudo apt-get install firmware-ralink

A new interface should now be availabe in

ifconfig -a

The “buggy”-feature which I experienced is not a big deal. I did not get any results with pccardctl ident, but this is not a bid deal as long as pccardctl eject works fine.

Apache virtualhost on localhost

There are several ways of doing this. Making subdomains are maybe the most widespread. But I found this much easier – and intuitive

First, I added a couple of new hosts in /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.2 alpha
127.0.0.3 beta
127.0.0.4 gamma

In /var/www, I added the folders alpha, beta, gamma containing index.php

<?php echo getcwd(); ?>

Then I added a new site in /etc/apache2/sites-availabe/

sudo nano greek
# alpha
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.2>
	DocumentRoot /var/www/alpha/
</VirtualHost>
# beta
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.3>
	DocumentRoot /var/www/beta/
</VirtualHost>
# gamma
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.4>
	DocumentRoot /var/www/gamma/
</VirtualHost>

And finished of with:

sudo a2ensite greek
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

firefox alpha now showed /var/www/alpha

This was first published here.

Setting correct papersize in Linux

I have struggled for a long time with the correct papersize. CUPS printer settings is set to default value A4, and /etc/papersize also is ‘a4′. However, when printing in Evince, the papersize is set to letter. Of course, I could change this manually, but why on earth was this option set as my default setting already?

Then I came over a question regarding the same issue in launchpad.net. Is says that applications tend to get their settings from your local settings – the language settings – more specific the LC_paper. Below is the star-comment from launchpad, posted by Pascal De Vuyst:

This is because evince uses the value of the LC_PAPER locale setting, for en_US.UTF-8 this defaults to letter. You can override this setting by using an LC_PAPER environment variable, if you want to do the change system wide you can add LC_PAPER=”en_GB.UTF-8″ (defaults to A4) to /etc/environment and log out and back into GNOME.

Now – of course you’ll need the the selected language in your locale settings – you may need to run

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

and add “en_GB.UTF-8″ and any other language you would like support for.

Mount remote filesystem over SSH with SSHFS

Using SSH is somewhat not easy for a newbie. To copy files over SSH, you need long commands. So, why not just mount the remote filesystem on your local computer!

Fuse is a part of the latest kernel, so you don’t need to install fuse-utils (if you’re not sure if you have fuse, run lsmod | grep fuse.) So – install sshfs:

sudo aptitude install sshfs

You need permission to use the fuse function – so add yourself to the groups:

sudo usermod -a -G fuse username

Now – create a directory where you want the remote filesystem (make sure you are the owner of the directory). I choose /media/directory

cd /media
sudo mkdir ext_sys
sudo chown myusername:myusergroup ext_sys

Now – you mount the system (I use /media/ext_sys as mount point)

sshfs remote_username@remote_ip: /media/ext_sys

To unmount, run

fusermount -u /media/ext_sys

Got to love Linux! I had a problem with my usb-stick – but ssh popped into my head – and voila! You learn something everyday

Updated:

You can allow the option to follow symlinks by adding ‘ -o follow-symlinks’

sshfs -o follow-symlinks user@server: /mnt/point

Ricoh Aficio MP C2500 on Debian

Getting a printer to work on Linux is pretty straight forward as long as you got the correct .ppd file for the printer. I struggled a couple of days with the PostScript ppd file – when infact it was the pxlmono ppd file that did the trick for me.

First, I installed cups

sudo aptitude install cupsys cupsys-driver-gutenprint foomatic-db-gutenprint foomatic-filters fontconfig libtiff4 libfreetype6

I also added Allow localhost in /etc/cups/cups.conf on certain places – to restrict access to cups-admin from other machines. Then I added myself to the group lpadmin to gain admin rights

sudo usermod -a -G lpadmin myusername

Remember the -a option which adds the user to groups rather than setting the primary group. Then restart cups

sudo /etc/init.d/cups restart

and add the printer via

http://localhost:631

My Ricoh Aficio MP C2500 is connected to my local network with a fixed ip. CUPS located the driver, I provided the ppd file – pxlmono located here: pxlmono pdd file.

Run sudo commands as normal user

I have recently installed LXDE on a Tecra 8100 which mainly is to be used by my father. He is comfortable in WinXP, and to explain the concept of sudo and to have the “why type password”-discussion, is not something he’d gain much sense about. Thus – I’d like for him to be able to run a few selected commands as sudo without the need of typing the password.

I found this excellent article by Vivek Gite at Cyberciti.biz: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/allow-a-normal-user-to-run-commands-as-root.html.

It is quite excellent for the given purpose

For instance – I wanted to run pccardctl eject/insert/ident without typing password as sudo. I ran

sudo visudo

and appended:

myusername mymachinename= NOPASSWD: /sbin/pccardctl

Save – all done

Debian Lenny+LXDE on Toshiba Tecra 8100

I have succesfully installed Debian Lenny and LXDE on an P3 600MHz 300MB ram Toshiba Tecra 8100. You would not believe how fast this machine is! LXDE runs like a charm! I am stunned!

Had some trouble getting the pcmcia to work – the kernel module for the controller did not load on boot. Also some tweaking due to some irq errors had to be resolved.

PCMCIA cards

SMC 2632W (v1) needs kernel module hostap_cs

D-Link DFE-670TXD needs kernel module pcnet_cs

/etc/modules

Maybe I don’t need all of them, but I added them in desperation – and when things finally worked – I left it alone! This is my /etc/modules:

lo
i83265
orinoco_cs
yenta_socket
ds
hostap_cs
pcnet_cs

/etc/pcmcia/config.opts

In the beginning of the file:

exclude irq 3
exclude irq 5
exclude irq 9

In the end of the file

card “D-Link DFE-670TXD PC Card”
manfid 0×0149, 0×4530
bind “pcnet_cs”

card “SMC2632W”
manfid 0×0156, 0×0002
bind “hostap_cs”

Running

sudo pccardctl ident

should identify the cards – so the two latter card-entries in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts should really not be necessary, but I needed them – don’t know why. Who cares – it works!