Monthly Archives: December 2005

Converting between Linux package formats with “alien”

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So let’s say I’m working on my box, which is running Ubuntu, a Debian-based distro, and I come across some nifty piece of software which is available in RPM format, but not in DEB format. What to do?

Use a nifty Perl program called alien (Wikipedia link).

With no options, it will convert that RPM package into a DEB package, installable with dpkg. If you want to go old school, you can use the -t option to convert the RPM into a good old .tar.gz file.

This is just one particular use. Alien can do a lot of other conversions as well.

Too frail for execution?

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Now that Tookie is behind us, the next guy on Death Row in California is Clarence Ray Allen, a 75 year old legally blind guy in a wheelchair. Apparently his lawyers are planning to argue for clemency, based on the fact that is he is too old and too ill for Death Row. This seems to be a rather interesting argument, given that typically the purpose of an execution is to kill the subject and it’s generally not very physically demanding.

Now of course, there is something that just seems horribly cruel about killing an old man and the lawyers no doubt will try to appeal to that sympathy. On the other hand, the other side can argue that he commissioned the deaths of 3 and tried to have several others killed, and thus is a figure hardly deserving of sympathy. The defense can argue that in his state, he is not a threat, while the other side can argue that it’s not about the neutralizing a threat but rather about doing justice.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Link

Lego Mindstorms

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Wow! I mentioned to my colleague Darrell the other day that I was interested in picking up a Lego Mindstorms set so I could tinker and today he brought in 2 boxes of stuff that he said he doesn’t want anymore. The transmitter is missing but he might be able to find it, and in any case, I could always just buy another set and just have extra microcontrollers and pieces for building even cooler stuff.

Want pain? Set up a printer in Linux

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I just spent a frustrating couple of hours getting my Canon i950 printer to work in Ubuntu. Setting up Ubuntu was pretty easy but setting up the CUPS printing was a pain. In the end, I got most of the info I needed from this Ubuntu forum thread though it wasn’t smooth and uneventful.

I needed to download and install a bunch of RPM’s from Canon’s Japan site and then that stuff needed libtiff.so.3 which seems to be in a former Ubuntu package called libtiff3g which doesn’t seem to exist in Breezy Badger. So I had to fetch it manually from here, restart the CUPS daemon and then I could setup the printer in the GNOME UI. Alas, I wanted to give the printer a nice simple name like “Canon i950” but the UI seemed to insist on picking the name “PIXUS-950i-ver.2.2” based on the driver and wouldn’t let me rename the printer.

So eventually I got printing working in Ubuntu and now it was time to see if I could share the printer with a Windows machine. Luckily, that part was much easier and you can do it without messing around with Samba, by using IPP (Internet Printing Protocol). After following some steps in the Ubuntu FAQ, I was able to use the URL http://192.168.1.30:631/printers/ in my browser to browse the printer setup with ESP. And I followed some steps on the Ubuntu Wiki in order to add the printer – basically adding a network printer and using the URL 

http://192.168.1.30:631/printers/PIXUS-950i-ver.2.2


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