phipster

These instructions on the Ubuntu KNetworkmanager page got my Compaq Presario C500’s Broadcom BCM 94311 MCG wlan interface back up and running after I fu-fiddled around with it this afternoon. I made the mistake of clicking the “Manual Configuration” option in KNetworkmanager, after which I lost all wireless connection, and couldn’t find my way back out of the wireless woods:

1. Made a backup of the file /etc/network/interfaces
2. Delete all configuration settings in the file except the lo interface

   auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0

3. saved the file then typed /etc/init.d/networking restart
4. After enabling the laptop’s wireless networking hard-button, the wired network reappeared in Networkmanager’s Connection Status
5. Also followed the instructions to enable the connection to survive suspend or hibernate, and bypass the keyring password at every login

I started tinkering with Rails again on Vista. Boy, is Mongrel ever slow. That’s what prompted me to test-drive Kubuntu in the first place. OK, let’s try it again. Download the Gutsy image, repartition, reinstall… wow, it Just Works. After a minor bit of fiddling to get the sound card working, I’m up and running on Kubuntu again. Except the printing thing. Complicating the matter, the printer, a Canon Pixma MP530, is shared out from a whitebox PC running Windows XP Home.

After a bit of googling, this is what I did:

1. Following a tip on the OpenPrinting database MP530 page pointing to Brady Hunsaker’s advice I downloaded the .rpm MP500 driver files from Canon’s FTP site.
2. Installed alien (what a cool name, not to be confused with alien-arena) then I converted the .rpm’s to .deb’s and installed them.
3. Brady says create symlinks to old library names… but he doesn’t explicitly say _where_, for the sake of beginners like me. After a few minutes of noobiness, I realized the symlinks should be in the same directory as the library files to which they point (`/usr/lib/`, not in the printer driver directory `/usr/share/cups/model`).
4. As a test, I plugged the printer directly into a USB port on my laptop then fired up the CUPS server on the default URL http://localhost:631/. No luck, CUPS couldn’t see the printer, even after I power-cycled it.
5. I noticed one of the device options is “Windows printer via SAMBA”. Hrm…
6. Followed the instructions on Debian and Windows Shared Printing mini-HOWTO to verify that my lappie can connect to the Winbox via smbclient as `smbclient -I WIN.BOX.IP.ADDRESS -L WINBOXNAME -N`.
7. Plugged the MP530 back into the Winbox, then started going through the new printer install, this time for “Windows printer via SAMBA”:
1. Add new printer
2. Fill in the name, etc.
3. Device for printer: select Windows printer via SAMBA
4. URI: `smb://WINDOWS.PC.IP.ADDRESS/HOSTNAME/PRINTERNAME`
5. Browse to the PPD file in /usr/share/cups/model/canonmp500.ppd
6. When prompted, enter your Linux username and password (like sudo)
7. Configure and enjoy the printer!

I successfully test-printed a couple of pages duplexed from a PDF, then printed a couple of images to 4×6 photo paper from the cassette tray. Looks like the MP500 driver works just great! Cool!