René's old blog

Archives: Archived posts

  • Printing from Mozilla Thunderbird through Xprint

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    René Seindal
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    I finally managed to print emails decently from Mozilla Thunderbird with the Xprint backend. Until now it has always come out too big, too small, in the wrong fonts or something else. It has never printed anything presentable. The necessary instruction on how to make it work are here. First of all, remove the copies…

  • Sawfish functions for hotkeys and panel launchers

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    René Seindal
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    One of my laptops has a series of hotkeys that send ACPI events, so I made a script to handle these events, which I later extended to be usable from the desktop or the panel too. The various applications have different needs, and I use them in different ways. I only have one mail reader…

  • Problems with packages in Debian Testing

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    René Seindal
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    There are currently some bugs in gcc related packages in Debian testing. They won’t install because they contain files owned by other packages too. The errors are: (Reading database … 77290 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace gcc-3.3-base 1:3.3.4-6sarge1.1 (using …/gcc-3.3-base_1%3a3.3.4-6sarge1.2_i386.deb) … Unpacking replacement gcc-3.3-base … dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/gcc-3.3-base_1%3a3.3.4-6sarge1.2_i386.deb (–unpack): trying to…

  • SWSUSP2 woes

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    René Seindal
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    I have never really used the suspend options on my laptops but since it might be handy I tried to install Software Suspend 2 on my Asus M2N laptop. SWSUSP2 was already supported in the kernel I recently installed, so it should be very easy, but no. At boot I give the kernel the resume2=swap:/dev/hda5…

  • Kernel 2.4.26 on the Soltek Qbic

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    René Seindal
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    My kernel upgrade rampage has hit my home server to day. It was still running the kernel installed by the debian netinstall cdroms I had used, so the amount of available modules were rather scarce. Most of the motherboard is based on the Intel ICH5 chipset, not that different than the Intel ICH4 chipset on…

  • Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 mini-pci network card

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    René Seindal
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    The Asus M2N series of laptops have an integrated wireless network card. It is an Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 mini-pci card, which supports 802.11b at 11Mbps. Initially I used an ndiswrapper type driver from linuxant.com, which I even paid for. I think it is the first time in many many years I have paid for a…

  • Getting a Debian kernel source tree for driver compilation

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    René Seindal
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    I have stumbled into this a few times, so I’d better write it down. Here is how you get a kernel source tree setup for compilation of drivers under Debian, assuming you’re using a Debian provided kernel package. The information is shamelessly stolen from Martin List-Petersen: Lets assume you’ve installed kernel-image-2.x.y-z-arch. It could be kernel-image-2.4.25-1-386…

  • Linux 2.4.24 on an Asus M2400N laptop

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    René Seindal
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    My Asus M2400N has been running 2.4.22 since I bought it. It came preinstalled with Debian stable and Linux 2.4.22, patched for Asus ACPI, cpufreq and swsusp, and I left it there because it was too much work upgrading. Recently I have noticed that display updates were noticably slower than before, and after a bit…

  • HP Color LaserJet 2550L

    HP Color LaserJet 2550L

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    René Seindal
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    My old laser printer died, and a few days later I stumbled over a good offer on a Hewland-Packard HP Color LaserJet 2550L, which I promptly bought. I got it for around $440 plus VAT. It is a colour laser printer, with four separate toner cartridges mounted on a carousel, and as the linuxprinting.org sites…

  • HP PSC-950 and Gimp-Print

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    René Seindal
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    I have a HP PSC-950 (Printer/Scanner/Copier and Fax), and I can print and scan without problems using hpijs and ghostscript for printing, and hpoj and xsane for scanning. Printing of photos on photographic paper from Gimp has always been a problem. The PPD file for the PSC 950 (from linuxprinting.org, called “HP PSC 950 Foomatic/hpijs”)…

  • Firefox based RSS News Aggregator

    Firefox based RSS News Aggregator

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    René Seindal
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    I just discovered sage, an RSS news aggragator written as an extension to Mozilla Firefox. It is very simple and quite elegant. In sage your RSS feeds are simply bookmarks in a designated folder. You can add a feed by adding a bookmark to that folder, and there is not special interface to organise your…

  • JohnCompanies collocated server hosting

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    René Seindal
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    In early May I signed up for a collocated virtual server at John Companies. I had a bunch of web sites which had become homeless at short notice and I needed something cheap, functional and easy to approach for a Linux/Debian person like me. In less than two hours after my first mail to them…