blog.crox.net

If you own a Netgear DG834 ADSL modem/router/bridge, and for some reason you'd like to terminate the PPPoE connection on another device, you'll probably be disappointed as we first were to see that there is no "bridge mode" option in the web interface, even after a firmware upgrade followed by a factory reset.

This doen't mean however that you can't. It's just undocumented... Here is how we finally got it up & running, after trying several procedures found here and there. The exact model we used is the DG834Bv2, but from what I've seen it should work with other similar devices as well (at least with other DG834B versions and also with DG834G variants).

- to begin with we installed the latest available firmware, V3.01.37 (we had to go to netgear.de for this, the international website didn't have it)

- this was followed by a factory reset

- then from the "basic settings" page/section we set "does your internet provider require a login" to "No"

- from the "LAN IP Setup" page/section we unchecked "use router as DHCP server"

- after going through these steps you'll have to edit the URL in your browser to go to the "mode.htm" page - this should redirect you to 192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?next_file=mode.htm ; on that page you can set the device to operate in "modem-only" mode.

It's quite easy actually, once you know where to look.

Just browse to http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/[version]/main/installer-[arch]/current/images/netboot/ubuntu-installer/[arch]/ - eg http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/intrepid/main/installer-i386/current/images/netboot/ubuntu-installer/i386/.

The two files "linux" and "initrd.gz" can be used with pxegrub to boot a PC with a fully-working Ubuntu-installer (text-mode). See my other posts about my diskless / network boot setup for details on how I configured the network booting part, based on dhcp, tftp and pxegrub.

Alternatively, if you have a CF card USB stick etc. with a working GRUB install, you can just copy the two files over there.

What I still haven't found is how to do an Ubuntu NFS install directly. For now I'm stuck with my diskless Ubuntu install procedure where I first do a hard disk install and then make it diskless.

Credits: the whole thing was inspired by this article.

- Lu à plusieurs reprises (mais pas vérifié moi-même) : il est difficile, mais pas impossible, de faire fonctionner VaudTax avec une VM Java 64 bits. (Il faut remplacer le swt.jar fourni par une série de liens symboliques.) Par contre, le format des fichiers sauvegardés n'est semble-t-il pas compatible d'une version 32 bits à une version 64 bits et vice-versa... J'ai donc opté pour la version téléchargeable qui inclut une JVM (32 bits).

- L'installation s'est déroulée sans peine, mais ensuite en exécutant VaudTax j'ai obtenu le message suivant :

Vous devez installer le navigateur Internet Mozilla Firefox afin de pouvoir visualiser l'aide de VaudTax 2007, se référer ici : http://www.eclipse.org/swt/faq.php#browserlinuxrcp

Ne souhaitant pas renoncer à l'aide en ligne, j'ai fini par trouver après de nombreux essais infructueux une procédure qui devrait fonctionner dans la plupart des cas :

- Télécharger xulrunner depuis http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/xulrunner/releases/1.8.0.1/linux-i686/en-US/ (avec la version 1.9 ça ne fonctionne pas chez moi)

- Décompacter xulrunner-1.8.0.1.en-US.linux-i686.tar.gz dans le répertoire dans lequel VaudTax est installé (chez moi et par défaut : $HOME/VaudTax2007)

- Modifier le script qui démarre VaudTax (chez moi et par défaut : $HOME/VaudTax2007/VaudTax2007) en ajoutant les lignes suivantes juste après #!/bin/sh :

export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=$HOME/VaudTax2007/xulrunner
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Liens utiles :

http://ymartin59.free.fr/wordpress/index.php/2008/02/17/suisse-vaudtax-2007-sur-linux-64-bits/
http://www.eclipse.org/swt/faq.php#browserlinux

UPDATE: there is now a version 2.0, see my new post

it's actually pretty easy :

- connect the aXbo to your linux computer using the provided USB cable

- download the JNLP file from their web interface (you need to register first)

- run

javaws aXbo.jnlp

Note: on my 64-bit Gentoo system I had to use "Sun 32bit JRE 1.6.0.07 [emul-linux-x86-java-1.6]" as user VM for this to work.

Then from the menu use the "find aXbo" function. If it fails, check

dmesg

to make sure that the USB connection has been properly initialised - the aXbo has a usb-to-serial converter inside:

(from lsusb)

ID 10c4:ea60 Cygnal Integrated Products, Inc.

(from dmesg)

[31426.366845] usb 2-2: New USB device found, idVendor=10c4, idProduct=ea60
[31426.366856] usb 2-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[31426.366863] usb 2-2: Product: CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller
[31426.366868] usb 2-2: Manufacturer: Silicon Labs
[31426.366871] usb 2-2: SerialNumber: 0001

The proper usbserial module (cp2101) was automatically loaded on my Gentoo system and a friend's Ubuntu laptop (both with fairly recent kernels though).

Now I'd like to bypass the GUI to be able to set the clock and download the data from the command line, but that's another story...

The Canon PIXMA MX850 (and other printers from Canon it seems) have an ethernet port, but do not support any standard network printing protocol, therefore they are not supported in cups out of the box. The protocol used is called BJNP, and uses tcp/udp ports 8611 to 8614.

Fortunately, an open source BJNP driver for cups has been written. You'll find it here, along with install instructions: http://www.fazant.net/cups/.

Once you have BJNP support in Cups, your printer should be auto-detected. You'll be able to print using the Gutenprint PIXMA iP5300 driver.

The following sources provided useful information to me:

- OpenPrinting MX850 page
- OpenPrinting Forum post
- Ubuntu forums thread
- BJNP protocol backend for CUPS README