Apple

Mac OS X Leopard printing to Linux CUPS server

9 September 2009 By Avinash Meetoo 4 Comments

20090909-printing-press

I generally use my MacBook (running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard) at work and it is essential for me to be able to print documents on my network printers attached to a Linux CUPS server (running CentOS Linux 5.3.)

What needs to be done on the Mac OS X Leopard computer

For some reason, Leopard cannot see printers shared by CUPS by default (it only sees Bonjour printers.) To rectify this, open a terminal and type:

sudo vi /etc/cups/cupsd.conf

and add “BrowseProtocols all” so that the file looks like this:

# Enable printer sharing and shared printers.

Browsing On

BrowseOrder allow,deny

BrowseAllow all

BrowseAddress @LOCAL

BrowseProtocols all

DefaultAuthType Basic

# Allow shared printing…

Order allow,deny

Allow @LOCAL

</Location>


# Enable printer sharing and shared printers.

Browsing On

BrowseOrder allow,deny

BrowseAllow all

BrowseAddress @LOCAL

BrowseProtocols all

DefaultAuthType Basic

&lt;Location /&gt;

 # Allow shared printing...

 Order allow,deny

 Allow @LOCAL

&lt;/Location&gt;

Then restart the CUPS daemon running on the Mac with


sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.cups.cupsd.plist

sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.cups.cupsd.plist

What needs to be done on the Linux server

Modify /etc/cups/cupsd.conf so that its beginning somewhat looks like this:


# Share local printers on the local network.

Browsing On

BrowseOrder allow,deny

BrowseAddress @LOCAL

DefaultAuthType Basic

&lt;Location /&gt;

  # Allow shared printing...

  Order allow,deny

  Allow @LOCAL

&lt;/Location&gt;

and restart the CUPS server with one of:


/etc/init.d/cups restart

/etc/init.d/cupsd restart

and everything should work from there. Go on your Mac and add your Linux printers in the usual way.

One observation I made

Printing generally works great but sometimes stop working when either the Mac or the Linux server are updated. What happens is that, during the update, the CUPS configuration (/etc/cups/cupsd.conf) gets slightly changed to something much more restrictive for security reasons (i.e. network printing is disabled.) I guess this is because both the Apple and Linux people think that it’s better be prudent than sorry especially in our era of fully opened Wifi network.

You’ve been warned :-)

X-Plane 9 simulator on Linux

2 September 2009 By Avinash Meetoo 17 Comments

20090902-x-plane-9

X-Plane 9 is the best flight simulator available on home computers. It has the best flight-model, the best scenery (60Gb of space required for installation!) and best performance. As Microsoft has killed Flight Simulator, I can easily foresee that a lot of people will get into X-Plane in the coming years.

For me (and I blogged on that before), the greatest thing about X-Plane is that it is multiplatform: it runs equally well on Linux, on Mac OS X and on that thing from Redmond… provided you have some decent hardware.

As I own a MacBook with an integrated (crap) Intel GMA950 GPU, X-Plane does not run well on it. Consequently, I run X-Plane 9 on my desktop PC which is a 3-4 years old AMD Athlon64 with 2Gb of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 7 GPU. I run X-Plane under Linux Mint 7 (as I currently believe it is the best Linux distribution for home users.) And I have to say that I am very satisfied with the performance and the looks.

From Faro to Ibiza

Just to give you an idea of how X-Plane looks under Linux, here are some screenshots from my flight from Faro (in the south of Portugal) to Ibiza (which is an island off the coast of Spain.) The flight took some two hours (real flight simulator addicts do not use accelerated time!) and was very nice…

Here I am in my Piper Malibu, which has a single piston engine, over the south of Portugal. The scenery below is magnificent (don’t you think so?) and 100% realistic. The weather effects (real-time of course) are also very believable. We will reach Ibiza (in principle) in around two hours…

20090902-ibiza-1

After two hours of uneventful flight hopping from an NDB to a VOR back to a NDB (I didn’t want to use GPS), Ibiza in sight (I wonder where are parties are organised???):

20090902-ibiza-2

Landing at Ibiza on runway 06 is interesting as it does not have an ILS. Instead I used a VOR positioned at the airport for the approach and used the autopilot to align myself with the runaway. I also used the autopilot to give me a 500fpm rate of descent until at about 2-3 NM from the threshold:

20090902-ibiza-3

I landed manually and I have to take care because of some crosswinds. What is great about X-Plane (and so unlike Flight Simulator) is that runways are not flat: they follow the contour of the terrain below and the aircraft bumps and jumps (like real small aircrafts do when landing):

20090902-ibiza-4

After taxing to a nice parking slot, I switched off the engine and the avionics of the Piper Malibu:

20090902-ibiza-5

Get me the beer now!

Green is more peaceful than Blue…

31 July 2009 By Avinash Meetoo 17 Comments

20090730-windows-bsod

A few weeks ago, I got a network attached storage device (a D-Link DNS-323 if you want to know) and it works perfectly with Mac OS X and Linux. I must have transferred more than 500Gb to and fro up to now without any glitch.

Yesterday, I was feeling bored and I decided to boot into Windows XP (I have it on one computer and I have stopped using it) to see if the NAS works well with it. The initial connection went well but I got a Blue Screen of Death (pictured above) during transfer of data.

I rebooted the PC in Windows and tried again. Once more I got the BSOD.

I wonder what normal people do when they get a BSOD? Do they contact their system administrator or technical support group as advised? Or do they just reboot and pray that the problem will go away?

Personally, I only have to reboot the PC and, after a few seconds, something magical happens: the Linux login screen appears.

20090731-mint

This is when I realise how lucky I am.