Half a Page of Scribbled Linux

I failed to get BackupPC 3.0 working last time I tried with the TAR install. Found it’s available as an RPM.

# yum install BackupPC
# service httpd start

Browsing http://localhost/BackupPC popped up a prompt for username and password for “BackupPC” at http://localhost. Neither BackupPC’s password nor root’s worked.
File /etc/httpd/conf.d/BackupPC.conf says:
AuthUserFile /etc/BackupPC/apache.users
So I created apache.users file with my user name (not backuppc) in it.
Now can see the BackupPC page, but it says it’s unable to connect to the BackupPC server.

# service backuppc start

Started full backup from web interface. It failed:
Read EOF: Connection reset by peer
Tried again: got 0 bytes
Done: 0 files, 0 bytes
Got fatal error during xfer (Unable to read 4 bytes)
Backup aborted (Unable to read 4 bytes)

The problem is that BackupPC is trying to SSH to root, but there’s no key to allow backuppc to log in without a password.
See http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/ssh.html#how_do_i_setup_openssh or:

$ su -
# su -s /bin/bash backuppc
$ ssh-keygen -t dsa
At password prompts, press enter.
$ exit
Edit ~root/.ssh/authorized_keys and add ~backuppc/.ssh/id_dsa.pub
Optionally append from="localhost.localdomain" if you only want backuppc to ssh to root from the local host.
# chmod u=rw,go= ~root/.ssh/authorized_keys

To test, su to backuppc as above and run ssh root@localhost. You should be logged in without having to enter a password.

The card reader on the HP PhotoSmart 8450 can be read in Linux using hp-toolbox. hp-toolbox comes in the hplip RPM.

When I ran hp-toolbox, it didn’t list any printers even though they are set up in CUPS (visible in a browser in http://localhost:631).
So I did a set up in hp-toolbox:

• Device/Set up new device
• Enter root password
• Select network connection–printer appears in list
• Select driver

Only three drivers showed up: HP Laserjet 8000 and 8100 series and Mopier 240. So I chose “Select Other”.

• Select the 8400 printer driver. Mine is in /usr/share/cups/model/HP-PhotoSmart_8400-hpijs.ppd.

I left “send test page to printer” selected. The page printed but the printer didn’t show up in list. Then I selected Device/refresh all and the printer appeared.
Put an SD card in card reader (lower right slot). Select Functions tab. Press “Photo Card” button. The pictures appear in a window to be selected. Note uploading pictures this way is really slow. My transfer rate is about 850K per minute.

My aging HP ScanJet 6200C has a yellow line in everything it scans. So when I was given the subject scanner, I was excited to try it out. Below are my scribblings in getting this working in Linux. Or should I say not getting it to work. Turns out it’s unsupported and works only in Windows.
http://www.freecolormanagement.com/sane/usb_scanner.html
cat /proc/bus/usb/devices
T: Bus=01 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#= 3 Spd=12 MxCh= 0
D: Ver= 1.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=04a7 ProdID=0331 Rev= 0.01
S: Manufacturer=Visioneer
S: Product=OneTouch 8600 EPP/USB
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=40 MxPwr= 48mA
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=10(unk. ) Sub=01 Prot=00 Driver=(none)
E: Ad=81(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms
E: Ad=02(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms

$ modprobe scanner vendor=04a7 product=0331
FATAL: Module scanner not found.

http://viceo.orcon.net.nz/
Download OneTouch8600 SANE backend
mkdir /usr/local/src/onetouch-scanner
cd /usr/local/src/onetouch-scanner
tar xzf ot.tar.gz
edit Makefile and fix path of libtool (/usr/bin on mine)
edit calibrat.cpp and add #include before /* LOCAL DEFINITION */
edit scan.cpp and add #include after #include “windows.h”
make

I found a program that will stream video from your PC to your TiVo. It requires the TiVo be on your home network, but other than that, it’s dead simple. The program is called pyTivo. You edit a configuration file and tell it what directory on the PC contains your videos. Run the program and those videos show up on your TiVo’s “Now Playing” screen under My Movies.

Seems the archives of this blog were broken. Probably since I last changed hosts. The path of the archives is specified in Blogger under “Settings” “Archiving” “Archive Path”. The location of the blog is in a different place on the new host, so the old path didn’t exist, so Blogger couldn’t write to it.

To create a new application for the menu: Enlightenment Configuration (Main Menu/Configuration/Configuration Panel)/Applications/New Application. I have no idea where this entry ended up.

There’s an Enlightenment menu editor called Entangle. It is shown on the configuration menu on some web sites. It’s not on mine. The package it’s in is e_utils (yum provides entangle tells you this). I installed it but it doesn’t seem to work on my system.

This is from the menu specs Enlightenment uses:

In /etc/xdg/menus is applications.menu. This file tells the menu where to get its entries.

In /usr/share/applications copy a .desktop file to a new entry. Edit this text file and restart Enlightenment. The menu will re-read the entries and place the .desktop entry in the menu depending on its Categories field. The Categories are listed in applications.menu.

My desktop, Hoover, was really sluggish. I use Pinto, the laptop more often when reading my mail, so it’s not clear when this started. I first suspected Comcast until my wife confirmed only Hoover did this. I checked DNS settings and both computers were using the same DNS servers. Some Googling picked up Slow internet (download OK but “looking up” is slow) which pointed to WebBrowsingSlowIPv6IPv4 that had instructions for disabling IPv6. It seems some NICs are broken with respect to IPv6. FWIW, mine’s a Lite-On Communications Inc LNE100TX, which, IIRC, came with my Comcast installation.

Except for the editor they use, it works in Fedora, too:

• edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
• Add this line: blacklist ipv6
• Reboot

I saw an article on ExtremeTech about KDE 4. It mentioned enlightenment, so I thought I’d give it another look, since I’m only moderately happy with Fluxbox. Here’s a review of Enlightenment 17.

Guides to Enlightenment 17
Download the yum-repo RPM. This adds a repo in /etc/yum.repos.d for e17. Check your other repos per Then yum install enlightenment. To change to E, switchdesk enlightenment. The first time I logged in after this, Enlightenment told me I was running the enlightenment binary and that was bad. So I edited ~/.Xclients-default and changed WM="enlightenment" to WM="enlightenment_start". Then it was happy.

Enlightenment news.
Enlightenment User Guide

Here are some references to print borderless (also known as fullbleed) photographs on the HP PhotoSmart 8450:

HPLIP Fullbleed with lpr HOWTO
HPLIP Fullbleed with kview HOWTO
Setting CUPS printer options

Summary:
Edit file in gimp.
Rotate if needed to make portrait.
Scale so shortest size matches paper size, e.g., 8.5″x11″. Change dpi to 300, change units to inches. Leave aspect linked.
Change image size to match paper size and center.
Save as picture.ps.
lpr -Php8450 -o media=Letter,Photo picture.ps

Currently, I use Bacula to back up my main Linux box. The problem is that it’s designed to work over a network and I’m only using it on one PC, so if that box goes down, I have to restore the file system and Bacula before I can restore. It’s the restoration of Bacula that worries me. It took me a long time to set it up and I’m worried that I might not be able to get it set up right for a restore. And Bacula’s backup files can’t be restored without Bacula. So I went looking for another solution.

I thought Amanda would work. It backs up to a format that can be restored with tar. The problem was, despite tutorials, I had trouble getting that to work too. It complained about the backup being too big to fit the virtual tapes (my target is DVDs, so the backup is to hard disk first). After I got that straightened out, I did a restore test. The root and boot partitions were fine, but the home parition was missing files. I checked the amrestore output and found that tar complained about bad files. The funny thing was, I could tar and restore the home partition manually and it was fine. What good is a backup you can’t restore? Right.