blog.crox.net

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

Here is what dmesg reports :

New USB device found, idVendor=1a86, idProduct=7523
New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
Product: USB2.0-Ser!

It works fine with the ch341 driver, I just had to add one line to drivers/usb/serial/ch341.c:

static struct usb_device_id id_table [] = {
        { USB_DEVICE(0x4348, 0x5523) },
        { USB_DEVICE(0x1a86, 0x7523) },
        { },
};

The relevant lines from my .config are:

CONFIG_USB_SERIAL=m
CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_GENERIC=y
CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_CH341=m

From the module comments:

ch341.c implements a serial port driver for the Winchiphead CH341.

The CH341 device can be used to implement an RS232 asynchronous serial port, an IEEE-1284 parallel printer port or a memory-like interface. In all cases the CH341 supports an I2C interface as well. This driver only supports the asynchronous serial interface.

I'm currently using a "vanilla" kernel 2.6.25.4.