I-Appliance BBS The Official Source for Internet Appliance Upgrades and Mods Click Here! BBS Main List | Sign In | Sign Up | Search | Help | Linux-Hacker.net Reply to Thread | Printer |

Home / I-Opener Areas / I-Opener Technical Stuff Linux -- How To General Linux How To Questions

Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) KneuB_2 Profile | Email This thread is a little off-topic, it is not i-opener specific but rather a general linux questions. Background; My mother had her fill of M$ Windows and purchased a Linux box from Fry's. Actually she did that at Thanksgiving. By definition of family structure that means I must keep it running. It is a very fun box to play on (free bootable CD version to play with in the forums section) and I have had many an enjoyable hour fighting with it. Unfortunately I have not won any battles yet. Reading Linux books and running trial and error tests is consumming all my spare time. As enjoyable as that is I would much rather be playing with hardware such as that TFT adapter board, not to mention that my mother is getting very impatient with my lack of success with basic setup. For this reason I am asking for your help. Problem #1 -- Installing a printer driver. As yet I have not figured out how to get to the command line, however, I can stumble onto it rather consistently, I just don't know how I get there, it seems different every time (this is already starting to sound bad right). Once there I can't seem to figure out what to do. Here is what I have so far. My mother has two printers a Brother multifunction printer model MFC3240c and a Lexmark Z13. The Linspire OS uses the DEB compression not the RPM compression. The Brothers Linux Drivers[/url site has drivers in the DEB format. The problem is that I can't seem to figure out how to install it now that I have it. The Lexmark Z13 is a bit more complicated. The lexmark Z13 Linux Driver is an RPM file stuck inside of shell script. The Alien application is capable of converting the RPM files to the DEB format, but it is way over my head at this point. Plus, assuming that I were to succeed at making the conversion I still do not know how to install it. My question is; Would somebody walk me through the installation of the Brother MFC3240c printer driver please. 02-01-2005 14:26:07

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) sodmeister Profile Step 1: Figure out how to get to a command line. In Linux, the CLI (Command Line Interface) is called a "shell". Search the menus and try to find one. If you have a "quick launch" thingy, try launching "xterm" to get a terminal window running a shell. Step 2: DEB are Debian packages, RPMs are RedHat/Mandrake. Since Linspire uses DEB, it probably based on the Debia distribution. So... from the command line, you will need to be able to execute a command like this: dpkg --install foo_VVV-RRR.deb where "foo_VVV-RRR.deb" is your printer driver package You are faced with two problems with Linspire. They make their money by charging users for access to their package archive. I would expect that the Linspire packages are somehow different than regular DEB packages, otherwise anyone could use apt-get and retrieve free packages from any of the Debian websites. The second problem is file permissions. To install a DEB or RPM package, you need to have root (super user, admin) privledges. Do you know how to do this in Linspire? Most likely not, I imagine it's hidden from you since Linspire is pre-packaged on the machine. A good source of Linux information is www.linuxquestions.org. You might want to consider some other Linux for the machine. Knoppix is a bootable CD distro that is based on Debian, uses the normal DEB packages and has some very nice hardware "sniffing" so it works on a lot of different machines. Hope this helps, at leasting pointing you in the right direction. 02-04-2005 22:26:36

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) KneuB_2 Profile | Email sodmeister Thank you for the pointers. Here is where I am at presently. In Linspire the command line interface is called the console window and is accessed from the "L" menu. The "L" menu is in the same default location as the "Start" menu in windows and works the same way. Under the "L" menu select "RUN" and type in "Konsole". The console window opens at your home directory, which in Linspire is "root". The "cd" command is very similar to DOS and allows you to move to what ever directory you wish to get to, in my case that was "My Documents" because that is where the downloaded driver was stored. Once there I was able to type dpkg -i mfc3240c.deb to do the installation. The command found the package, unpacked the package and installed the package. After that completed I rebooted and now I'm stuck again. I do not know how to tell the machine to use this driver nor do I know how to tell it to use this printer. Where should I be looking now? 02-06-2005 00:30:51

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) sodmeister Profile For root command line access: Start Application -> Programs -> Utilities -> Console Since you've installed the .deb package for the MFC3240C, check to see if you can specify it in the printer setup wizard: Start Application -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Peripherals -> Printers Select the "Add printer/class" tab and you should be in the Setup Wizard. Select a local printer and see if your printer shows up anywhere in the device 'tree'. If you click on one of the USB ports, you can see a list of printers by manufacturer and model number. See if Brother has an MFC-3240C listed. BTW, Linspire looks to be Debian based using the 'K' Desktop Environment (KDE). I also looked at Knoppix, and it has the exact same (default) list of Brother MFC printers in it's Setup Wizard. I didn't get any hits on Google for the MFC 3240C in the newsgroups. You might try looking for printer setup under KDE to see if there's any info on how to add printers to the Setup Wizard. I have the .deb package and should be able to load it onto my Knoppix based notebook later today. Can't load the package using the CDs since they have read-only file systems, so it has to be on a machine with a hard disk install. sod ( "The lunatics are on the grass..." ) 02-07-2005 17:06:48

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) sodmeister Profile I did the install on my notebook. You need to change the print system to "Generic UNIX LPD Print System (default)" in order to see the MFC3240c. Under Knoppix, the print system comes up as CUPS by default. Looks like "you are there" with the .deb file installed and proper setup. sod ( "The lunatics are on the grass..." ) 02-07-2005 21:01:00

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) KneuB_2 Profile | Email Sodmeister Thank you, I will give it a try and see how it goes....just as soon as I get the monitor working again. Linspire has a bug in the redetect feature, it will turn some monitors black as soon as you use it. I used the redetect feature to see if it would add the MFC3240c to the printer setup wizard. I do not know if it worked since I can no-longer see anything on the monitor. The only fix I have found for this sofar is to use KillDisk on the hard drive and re-install the OS with a differrent brand of monitor attached. I have to go borrow another monitor to do this, so I'm a couple days away from another attempt BTW: Linspire is Debian based. Also I have an extra "Legal" copy of Linspire 4.5 Developer and I would be happy to let you have it to help me figure this out. If you have access to a high bandwidth connection and a CD burner then drop me an e-mail and I will set-up the transfer. 02-08-2005 14:15:06

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) sodmeister Profile Monitor sync rate troubles is perhaps the worst problem with X windows under Linux! Can you get to a console (text only) display by pressing CTRL+ALT+F1 ? I will try this with the Live CD to see if they have psuedo-ttys (pttys) running. If it works, then it's possible to recover the monitor settings to make X windows work again. The basic steps are: Get to a text only display (with CTRL+ALT+F1/F2/F3...) As the root user, execute the command "telinit 2" Edit the X config file, fixing monitor settings Test new settings Re-boot Debian, and a lot of other Linux distros, have the concept of a "runlevel". Level 1 is single user, level 2 is multi-user with networking started, level 3 is level 2 but with network filesystems (shared files) active, and level 5 is level 3 with the X windows started. You can set the runlevel from the boot manager (LILO) or use the telinit command. If X windows can't talk to the video hardware, it will make several attempts to function and then drop into text mode. If X can start OK, but the sync settings are wrong for you monitor, then the monitor will blank. This is most common on LCD monitors, you might see a "Signal out of Range" type message, then blank. If you are using an LCD monitor, try using a (modern) CRT monitor before you wipe and re-install Linspire. A re-install should be your last resort! Thanks for the offer of Linspire, but Linspire doesn't excite me. It's OK, but I like Knoppix a lot better. I've got Fedora Core on several machines, including the 64bit AMD machine. No single distro is perfect. sod ( "The lunatics are on the grass..." ) 02-08-2005 16:26:53

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) sodmeister Profile You can also use the Linspire Live CD as a "rescue disk". Once it boots, your hard drive's partitions will be mounted, either under /mnt/disks or possibly under /tmp. Use the "mount" command to get a list of mounted drives. The path will vary, but you are looking for something like: /mnt/disks/hda1/etc/X11 or /tmp/.DeskTopxxx/etc/X11 so.... ls /mnt/disks/hda1/etc/X11. You will see files: XF86Config-4 XF86Config-4.bak cd /mnt/disks/hda1/etc/X11 cp XF86Config-4 XF86Config-4.new cp XF85Config-4.bak XF86Config-4 This will restore your monitor settings for X windows. I bet you were trying to get to the native resolution of an LCD monitor (1280 x 1024 instead of 1024 x 768) and things just weren't quite right for sync with your monitor. sod ( "The lunatics are on the grass..." ) 02-08-2005 17:30:48

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) KneuB_2 Profile | Email sodmeister Thanks, I shall give this a try and let you know what happens. Using the LinspireLive CD as an emergency boot disk I had already tried....did not work. The monitor still fades to black at the same point in the boot process as when booting off the hard drive. This does not make sense to me, but it does it. I pick up the alternate monitor late tonight so I will not get a chance to try any of these until tomorrow evening, but I shall let you know what happens. 02-09-2005 13:38:42

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 1 times) KneuB_2 Profile | Email Sodmeister "Signal Out of Range" is exactly what the primary monitor (Planner LCD) is experiencing. Using the LinspireLive CD fades to black and the "signal out of range" message .... just like booting from the hard drive. CTRL + Alt + F1 nada CTRL + Alt + F2 nada CTRL + Alt + F3 nada Connected the alternate monitor (Mag LCD) and booted off the KillDisk diskette. Wiped the drive clean. Installed Linspire and booted. It works but this is still with the Mag montor. CTRL + Alt + F1 mostly blue screen with strange multi colored blotches along the top, forced a reboot to escape. CTRL + Alt + F2 mostly blue screen with strange multi colored blotches along the top, forced a reboot to escape. CTRL + Alt + F3 mostly blue screen with strange multi colored blotches along the top, forced a reboot to escape. Downloaded a fresh copy of the MFC3240c.deb printer driver and noticed that it was in the LPR section. There is not one in the CUPS section. Is this a show stopper or a conversion issue like converting RPM to DEB? The Brother linux support site does mention that models without a specific CUPS driver can us the PPD driver when connected to Linux systems using the CUPS format. I have not yet found the PPD driver (it was supposedly on the CD that came with the printer) but that may be because I'm not sure what I'm looking for, is PPD the extension? I have to return the borrowed monitor and swap it for the primary monitor to determine if the new installation did any good. Unfortunately I will not get anoter crack at this until Sunday at the earliest now 02-10-2005 22:20:10

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) sodmeister Profile There are several printing systems available under Unix/Linux. The oldest one is LPR/LPD. When a print job is started, a (R)equest is issued using LPR. LPR is a client program that connects to a server (LPD). LPD queues the print job for the desired printer. LPD then services requests from the printer queue(s) and processes the file to be printed through a set of filter programs before sending the filtered print job to the actual printer. PPD stands for "Postscript Printer Definition". This is used by the LPD filter programs to generate Postscript for you particular printer. CUPS is the Common Unix Printing System. It is a super set or printing solutions under Unix. This include LPR/LPD, IPP (Internet Printing Protocol), various LAN printing systems such as HP's "JetDIrect", MicroSoft's SMB shares, etc. Since your printer is connected directly to your machine (and you're not sharing it on a network), then the LPR/LPD system will work OK for you. If you intend on sharing the printer with a Windows machine, then you would be better off getting CUPS to run properly. I recommend you go to www.linuxquestions.org and search for printer setup information. sod ( "The lunatics are on the grass..." ) 02-11-2005 10:56:55

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) KneuB_2 Profile | Email I'm Back Things went from bad to worse for a short bit there, I'm actually writing this from the hospital, but that is a whole n'other story. I was down to one machine and it went south big time. Nothing seemed to fix it. I could not get on the net with it, I could not even reformat the drive to start over with a clean installation, not even KillDisk could touch it. Every non-working hour was spent trying to get it running. If I was not working on the machine then I was at the library or some such place with net access to find some other approach to the problem. The final solution was to overwrite the Win2k OS with Caldera and then overwrite Caldera with Win2K. It worked! That machine is back up and running. I have no clue what went wrong other than it occured during the reboot after an M$ OS security upgrade. No I have not yet reinstalled all the upgrades. Anyway, I am at the hospital now but will be going home in a few hours, and will be there for two days. During that time I intend to resolve the Linspire printer problem. Since I will be online while doing this I shall post my prograss, or lack thereof live. Please feel free to jump right in with suggestions as I do not want to waste this sick leave time off. I shall return in a few hours. 02-24-2005 11:00:04

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) KneuB_2 Profile | Email Early problems Cleaned, partitioned and formated the HD, then re-installed Linspire and put a fresh copy of the MFC3240c.deb file in the root drectory. From the Konsole panel I ran dpkg -i MFC3240c.deb The screen reads; Selecting previously deslected package mfc3240clpr. (Reading database ... 44256 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking mfc3240clpr from mfc3240c.dep) ... Setting up mfc3240clpr (1.0.0-1) ... mkdir: Cannot create directory '/var/spool/lpd/MFC3240c': No such file or directory. chown: Failed to get attribtes of '/var/spool/lpd/MFC3240c': No such file or directory. chgrp: Failed to get attribtes of '/var/spool/lpd/MFC3240c': No such file or directory. chmod: Failed to get attribtes of '/var/spool/lpd/MFC3240c': No such file or directory. Any suggestions? 02-24-2005 16:21:50

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) KneuB_2 Profile | Email Progress or Lack Thereof Learned the by manually creating the LPD directory in the correct location then dpkg -i MFC3240c.deb command will then happily run through it paces. Also learned that Foomatic comes as part of the Linspire distro, pre-installed. Still trying to figureout how to use it. 02-25-2005 21:39:59

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) KneuB_2 Profile | Email AAAUGGHHHHH ! Roll up your pant legs its getting deep in here!! The printer manufacturer (Brother) just posted a "CUPS WRAPPER" that creates all the PPD files and whatnot so the LPR printer drivers for the DEB based linux systems will be able to run under the CUPS environment. YES ! The drawback is that it requires c-shell (csh) be installed inorder to function. I have found the tcsh home page and download site for the source code but I do not have a clue how to compile source code. A little help here would be greatly appreciated. 03-04-2005 23:39:29

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) KneuB_2 Profile | Email COMING HOME I FINALY got the printer working on my mothers computer. I have tried many versions of linux now just to get this to work. Fedora Core 4 did the trick. Now to get the rest of the software installed so I can get back to playing with the i-o. This task has been way to long. On the other hand, linux has definately peaked my curiosity. I will have to try and install it on the i-o. 08-05-2005 16:03:46

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) Linuxguru Profile | Email Sorry - I missed this thread earlier, or I'd have recommended going with an RPM-based distribution. The most popular RPM-based distros are Red Hat/Fedora, Suse, Mandrake/Connectiva/Mandriva, White Box, Centos, PLD, and a few others. Anyway, your choice of Fedora Core 4 (FC 4) is probably the best - I've using Fedora for a little over 9 months now, and it's a very polished and efficient distribution. I thought that FC 3 was the best distribution I'd ever used, but FC 4 is even better and slightly faster as well. 08-11-2005 07:03:45

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) KneuB_2 Profile | Email linuxguru Since you have been using Fedora for a while then maybe you can help me with the next step. At this point she has her e-mail working and the printer working but I have not been able to install the two pieces of software she uses. Star Office is what she is used to but she has open office available now so I will back burner Star Office for the moment. The one piece of software that she uses a lot is a windows application called "Greeting Cards". Like its name says, that is what it does, creates greeting cards. Since I can not seem to find a Linux equivalent package I figure I need to install Wine first and then run the windows application. Have you ever gotten wine to install on Fedora? 08-14-2005 00:36:46

RE:Linux -- How To (modified 0 times) Linuxguru Profile | Email > Star Office is what she is used to but she has open office available now so I will back burner Star Office for the moment. Also check out abiword at http://www.abisource.com/ It's a relatively bloat-free, fast, full-featured word-processor which can read and write most formats. > Have you ever gotten wine to install on Fedora? Yes, I've installed wine-20041201-1fc3winehq on Fedora Core 3, and it will also install on FC4, but I haven't verified if it runs exactly the same. Other emulators include qemu (which can run any guest OS) and dosemu (which will only run DOS). 08-14-2005 10:08:43

Reply to Thread | Printer | All times are PST Powered by UltraBoard v1.62

I-Appliance BBS General - NEWS, Breaking NEWS - linux-hacker.net BBS on CD Questions - User Groups in Your Town - E-Bay, Yahoo Auction LINKS ONLY (MODERATED) - Jokes & Humor - usdtv box I-Opener Areas - I-Opener General Posts - I-Opener Technical Stuff - I-Opener Technical Info Reference (MODERATED) WebSurfer Areas - WebSurfer General Posts - WebSurfer Technical Stuff - WebSurfer Technical Info Reference (MODERATED) Other I-Appliances - Virgin Webplayer - WebPal - MailStation - 3Com Audrey - ThinkNIC / Oracle NIC - Gateway/AOL Connected Touch Pad - Philips/AOL-TV - ACER NT-150 STB - MSN Companion - Compaq IA - Emachines IA - IBM NetVista IA - Intel dot.station - MSNTV2 Network Computers - Fujitsu-Siemens Scovery Linux Net Computers - GallantWeb Server Consoles - Dreamcast - xbox hacking Web Pads - Epods One General Post - Panasonic CF-01 - Fujitsu Stylistic 1200 - Cybiko Thin Clients - Thin Clients DigitalVideoRecorders - DTV Recorders, Replay, TiVo, Etc... - Tivo Hacks Linux - Midori Linux General Board - ITX MotherBoards Single Board Computers - Earth Computers mARMalade Elite Member Area MISC Areas - The Swap Meet WE TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY TRANSACTION HERE AND NO COMMERCIAL POST PERIOD !!! - Wireless Net - Cameras - Robotics - Routers/Gateways - Mattel JuiceBox