Category: Tech

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Linux & Kodak EasyShare 5100 All-in-one printer

Up to this point, our family has used Epson inkjet printers. We valued the archival-quality ink and I valued the Linux support. Unfortunately, Epson ink is expensive — very expensive.

Kodak entered the inkjet market last year and offered vastly lower ink price, making their printers a compelling choice. When our Epson printer started having printing problems, even with new ink cartridges, we made the plunge and bought a Kodak 5100 all-in-one printer/scanner/copier. So far, we’ve been pleased with the result.

Linux support didn’t seem to be an issue, since we do nearly all of our printing from Windows. Now that we have a laptop, I thought it would be nice to hook the Kodak printer up to my samba print server.

Unfortunately, there are no Linux drivers for the printer, which means it won’t work to have Samba serve up the printer. I contacted Kodak, wondering if they plan on offering Linux drivers. I’ve included their response, which boils down to this: *Kodak designed the printer to use USB protocols that aren’t yet supported by Linux*. Whether it was a good technical decision or not, I don’t know. I can’t tell, from their response, whether Linux will have the appropriate USB drivers in the near future or not.

> Greetings Jared,
>
> Thank you for your recent visit to the Kodak Web site and question about your Kodak EasyShare 5100 All-in-One Printer.
>
> Thank you for visiting the Kodak web site and your inquiry regarding Kodak support for Linux operating system with Kodak products. Currently there is no support for Kodak products on the Linux OS by Kodak. Our Kodak software engineers are well aware of the Linux operating system. We appreciate your concern for this operating system and interest in enabling Kodak products to work with it.
>
> Kodak continues to follow the Linux Operating system. We noted, as far back as March 30, 1999, that Linux announced support of a Linux-USB driver that only worked with UHCI controllers. Since UHCI controllers represent only a portion of the PC market, Linux-USB was very limited and was very preliminary even six months ago.
>
> We had the same situation in the past with preliminary Microsoft-USB drivers and now version 2 USB as well. Sometimes, the availability of these drivers simply does not match our product release dates. Even after the support is there, as is the case with Microsoft version 1, we still have to update our Kodak web site with the latest driver patches to keep in step with Microsoft-USB patches. In addition, Kodak has worked very closely with the USB IF Working Group on the USB standard participating in numerous USB “Plug Fests” where we test out our hardware and software on a variety of computers with various “chip sets”.
>
> In the past, prior to the release of Microsoft Windows 98, Kodak worked intensely with the staff at the Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) to achieve “Windows Logo”. This was no small feat with the USB technology forming the basis of the DVC323 and later products and the Windows 98 operating system. As a result, the DVC323 passed all USB compliance testing with Windows 98. I am not sure that there is such a rigorous test standard for Linux-USB. If not, this has serious implications on our technical support staff and the cost for providing a Linux-USB
> driver.
>
> We understand the issue with devices based on the CPiA chip set and once again are faced with a problem with Linux-USB support in that isochronous transfer is not yet fully implemented. There is a distinct difference when a company claims “USB support” it does not always mean “full USB support”. Kodak relies on full support for UHCI and OHCI host controllers as well as their corresponding USB transfer types. The support for this simply is not there yet.
>
> As Linux-USB becomes fully implemented and released with the Linux OS, Kodak may investigate the technical feasibility of developing Linux-USB drivers for future products. I am confident that our technical teams would be able to provide support once Kodak analyzed the business case for such support.
>
> Thank you for contacting Kodak. If you have future questions on Kodak products or services, visit our site, as we continually add information to enhance our service.
>
> We are glad to be of service and are here for you if you need us in the future. Please reply to us “with history” if you need to respond to this email.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Cristian P
>
> Kodak Information and Technical Support
> www.kodak.com/go/support
>

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‘fuser’ linux command

I recently learned about the [`fuser`](http://www.google.com/search?q=fuser+linux+man+page) command, which may be useful when I want to unmount a file system that is in use ([`lsof`](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lsof) is also handy):

fuser -mu /media/USBFLASH # list pids and usernames with files open
fuser -muki /media/USBFLASH # kill, with a prompt, pids with open files

However, a lazy unmount is often sufficient:

umount -l /media/USBFLASH

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Laptop hard drive lifetime (load cycles)

Run the following:

$ sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep -P ‘Load_Cycle|ATTRIB’

And see something like this:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always – 6038

The last value is the number of load cycles. A laptop hard drive typically has a lifetime of 600,000 load cycles. If the count is increasing by several thousand per day (or even several hundred), it may be cause for concern.

For information and how to fix it, see [http://lwn.net/Articles/256769/](http://lwn.net/Articles/256769/)

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The journey to Fedora 8

I’ve upgraded our family laptop to [Fedora 8](http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/ReleaseSummary) (yes, we still dual boot into Windows Vista). The upgrade would have been a rather bumpy ride, except that I knew that Fedora 8 upgrades are [problematic](http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/F8Common#head-7b9bf2dab0e2bdd97d98334c7198cd9cd3eaf9be) (installs are OK), and that there’s a [workaround](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=372011).

While Fedora 7 supported our laptop fairly well, Fedora 8 is even better. The power savings features are better. The Fedora community has tracked down and fixed several programs that were power hogs. The screen dims automatically while on battery power after about 30 seconds. File systems are reportedly mounted with the new [‘relatime’ option](http://www.lesswatts.org/tips/disks.php), which saves on hard drive battery usage — unless you upgrade, in which case, you have to add it manually. Improved wireless drivers in combination with an improved Network Manager connect more reliably, and more quickly, to our WPA2 access point.

*FreeNX broken, and manually fixed*

I use FreeNX regularly to connect to a remote linux box. When I upgraded one machine to Fedora 8, I couldn’t connect using an NX client. I found [a suggestion](http://www.nabble.com/Fedora-8-working-for-anyone–t4806795.html) that helped me fix it: Edit `/usr/libexec/nx/nxnode` and replace `DISPLAY=”unix:$display”` with `DISPLAY=”:$display”` everywhere. Hopefully, someone will re-roll the FreeNX packages to fix this for Fedora 8.

*Ubuntu sidenote*

I’ve heard the claim that Ubuntu is more ready for the desktop than Fedora, and up to this point, I didn’t know how that could be. Last weekend, I plugged a Logitech quick cam into my brother’s Ubuntu system. I was trying to figure out how to load the webcam driver, when we discovered that Ubuntu had already recognized the webcam, and it was ready to use.

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Linux performance tuning

When attempting to find and fix performance bottlenecks on a Linux system, it’s helpful to know where to start. Here are a few resources I’ve found:

IBM’s [Linux Performance and Tuning Guidelines](http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp4285.html), published July 2007

> This IBM Redpaper describes the methods you can use to tune Linux,
tools that you can use to monitor and analyze server performance, and
key tuning parameters for specific server applications. The purpose of
this redpaper is to understand, analyze, and tune the Linux operating
system to yield superior performance for any type of application you
plan to run on these systems. ( [Read more…](http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp4285.html) )

This website has useful tips:
[http://www.performancewiki.com/](http://www.performancewiki.com/)

Google has some tools that people recommend:
[http://code.google.com/p/google-perftools/wiki/GooglePerformanceTools](http://code.google.com/p/google-perftools/wiki/GooglePerformanceTools)

This book seems to be recommended:
[Optimizing Linux Performance](http://www.amazon.com/Optimizing-Linux-Performance-Hands-Professional/dp/0131486829)

In my experience, strace and ltrace along with the “-c” and “-T” options, are extremely useful — even for Perl scripts. The “-T” option shows the timings of calls, and can help isolate what calls are the slowest.

* `strace -o program.trace -T -p `
* `ltrace -o program.trace -T -p `

The “-c” option gives a summary of the calls that used the most time:

* `strace -c -p `
* `ltrace -c -p `

I haven’t found a good way to isolate memory leaks in Perl programs — not that I’m an expert. What has worked for me is to [divide and conquer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_conquer_algorithm) in order to isolate the problem.

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Internet Explorer more secure than Firefox?

In the past, I’ve recommended to friends and family that they run Firefox instead of Internet Explorer to gain better security and usability on Windows systems. I’m re-evaluating that stance now that I’ve learned about a new feature of Windows Vista that restricts Internet Explorer and runs it inside of a jail. It’s called [Protected Mode](http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/02/09/528963.aspx), or [Mandatory Integrity Control](http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1887/2), and it means that that spyware and adware are less likely to infect a Vista computer.

As far as I know, Firefox doesn’t (yet) run inside the “jail”, so Internet Explorer is probably the more secure choice — yet another reason to admire the technical engineering [effort that went into Windows Vista](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#New_or_improved_features).

Despite the improved security of IE 7 in Vista, I enjoy the usability of Firefox, including the ability to disable JavaScript from running by default, using the [NoScript extension](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722) extension. Does anyone know whether there’s a [NoScript extension](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722) available for Internet Explorer? If not, I’m sticking with Firefox.

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Laptop lamentations and blissful benefits

At our household, we’ve finally made the leap from a desktop computer to a shiny new laptop — an [HP dv6426us](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000RGG5EC/). A new computer, in theory, should save time because it runs faster, right? Wrong. It takes time to become familiar with Windows Vista and where they’ve managed to hide various configuration options (displaying file extensions in Explorer). HP doesn’t make it obvious how to get rid of their annoying add-ons from popping up in my face. I didn’t buy this thing to run the HP Health Center. I bought it so the OS would stay out of my way, and let me focus on work (err, tinkering).

We’re still attached to our desktop computer until we have migrated our data and applications over to the laptop. Migration requires time, time, and more time. [FireFox](http://www.getfirefox.net/), [Thunderbird](http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/), Quicken, [Vim](http://www.vim.org), [Password Safe](http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/), [Putty](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/), [Cygwin](http://www.cygwin.com/), PrintMaster, Hallmark Create-a-Card, Palm Desktop, [OpenOffice](http://www.openoffice.org/), [IrfanView](http://www.irfanview.com/), [NoMachine NX](http://www.nomachine.com/), an instant messaging client, and the list goes on. I’ve tried Vista’s new [Windows Mail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mail), and it’s much better than Outlook Express, but my wife and I have our email in Thunderbird, and it was easy to migrate that across — once I figured out where to drop the folder on Vista — in `C:\Users\MyUserName\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird`. PrintMaster 12 didn’t run for non-admin users until I figured out that I needed to grant Full Control access for `C:\Program Files\Broderbund\PrintMaster\Ereg`. Cygwin and NoMachine NX conflict with each other.

I bought this particular laptop because the hardware was likely to work with Linux — it has an Intel graphics card, which has open-source Linux drivers, and Intel WiFi. Open source drivers mean that suspend and resume are far more likely to function correctly than when using proprietary drivers (as from Nvidia or ATI).

I would install Fedora 7, which meant I needed to resize the existing windows partition. Vista’s disk manager made this a piece of cake. Installing Fedora 7 was easy. At first, Fedora didn’t resume after suspending to RAM. After applying all Fedora updates, it worked, although WiFi doesn’t work after the resume. Hibernate always works, and so does WiFi after resuming from hibernation. WiFi and the NetworkManager didn’t allow me to connect to my WPA2-encrypted access point until I disabled SELinux.

Linux has other problems running on the hardware, including:

– Secondary screen output hasn’t worked yet. This is easy and painless in Windows. It sounds like the latest xorg releases may help solve this situation with their Rotate and Render extensions ([RandR](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XRandR)).
– Microphone doesn’t seem to work (although it does through VMWare Windows guest). Haven’t figured this out yet.
– Spotty webcam support in applications. Ekiga crashes. But yes, I found a [driver for my webcam](http://linux-uvc.berlios.de/). Too bad it didn’t come with Fedora 7 — I had to download, compile and install it myself.
– Slow hibernate/resume. The [TuxOnIce](http://www.tuxonice.net/) project supposedly remedies this, but I don’t want to spend all of my time tweaking my Linux box.
– Battery life. Even the Linux kernel hackers acknowledge that Windows gives better battery life than Linux. This situation is being remedied, gradually.

It takes more time than I want to spend to get Linux to run optimally on this hardware, and there are some Windows applications that just don’t have equivalents in Linux, like Print Master. My plan is to run Linux under [VirtualBox](http://www.virtualbox.org/) or [VMPlayer](http://www.vmware.com/products/player/).

I now realize that there’s huge value in an OEM preinstall of an operating system for end users. I had considered buying a [Ubuntu DELL laptop](http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/linux_3x), but let’s face it, DELL insiprons are ugly. HP systems are sleek, beautiful, and cost less while coming with more features (like a webcam).

Having a laptop is changing the way we work. Mobility is a huge win. We took the laptop with us when we went to vote in the primary election, because we had candidate information we could access using a web browser. There are downsides, of course.

We need a new printer and a new scanner with Vista drivers. We get to put up with frequent security dialogs interrupting our work flow. Vista itself consumes more RAM (nearly 500 MB), so we may need to upgrade to 2 GB. Vista runs slower than XP and Linux. Vista’s hibernate/resume is quite slow and gives no visual feedback during hibernation, just a blank screen. Vista’s boot and login experience is slow. Oh well. Life goes on.

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Git underwhelms

I work on source code from two separate SVN
repositories. One of them is geographically remote. Working with the remote server is slow for ‘log’, ‘diff -r’, ‘blame’, etc. Due to my interest in distributed version control, and my desire for faster repository access, I decided to try git and git-svn. Doing ‘log’, ‘diff’, etc. with a local git repo is much faster, but on the whole, working in a git repo created with git-svn has been difficult and unrewarding. Perhaps it would be easier if others at my company were using git-svn and we could share ideas. Working with git and git-svn requires learning a new workflow, and I haven’t yet reached enlightenment.

Challenges with Git:

  • The Git Wiki is often out-of-date and/or incomplete (submodule support, for example).
  • No Nautilus, Konquerer, or Windows Explorer integration.
  • No KDevelop itegration.
  • git-gui should:
  • let me double-click on files listed in either “Staged Changes” or “Unstaged Changes” to edit the file. Or let me right-click and choose an “edit” option.
  • Let me use an external diff program such as meld or kdiff3. git-gui should let me set this up and use it. qgit has an external diff option (defaults to kompare), but it doesn’t use the working copy on the right hand side, so it’s not possible to use the diff tool to change the working copy file.

Challenges with Git-SVN: (More complicated to use than Subversion)

  • Two stage commit instead of single stage. ‘git commit’, ‘git-svn dcommit’
  • Error messages are cryptic, so I don’t know how to resolve the errors.
  • git-svn rebase doesn’t merge changes from upstream Subversion server into my working copy, and git-svn doesn’t tell me what workflow I should be using. So I ran git-svn fetch to pull upstream Subversion changes. Then I ran git-gui and chose Merge->Local. It told me something helpful. “You are in the middle of a change. File X is modified. You should complete the current commit before starting the merge. Doing so will help you abort a failed merge, should the need arise.” “git-svn rebase” should have told me
    the same thing.

Reasons to continue with Subversion:

  • Workflow is easier, less complex — perhaps because I’m used to it.
  • Windows Explorer integration via TortiseSVN.
  • IDE integration. Nearly every IDE supports or has a pluging for Subversion.
  • svnmerge.py gives me cherry-picking support (between branches within the same repository)
  • svnmerge.py remembers merges, so I don’t have to resolve the same
    conflicts twice.
  • I don’t need disconnected operation in my workplace.

I hope that in a year, Git, git-svn and developer tool integration will be more mature and thus rewarding to use. With the rapid development I see happening, it wouldn’t be surprising.

I will continue to use git-svn. It gives me the speed I need for working with log history, annotate and diff.

Update: I’ve come across Git for Computer Scientists, and seeing the pretty graphs leads me to believe that working with git requires an understanding of how git works.

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Article: The Pillars of Concurrency

[The Pillars of Concurrency](http://www.ddj.com/dept/64bit/200001985), July 02, 2007 by Herb Sutter

“In his inaugural column, Herb makes the case that we must build a
consistent mental model before talking about concurrency.
Herb is a software architect at Microsoft and chair of the ISO C++
Standards committee.”

* Pillar 1: Responsiveness and Isolation Via Asynchronous Agents
* Pillar 2: Throughput and Scalability Via Concurrent Collections
* Pillar 3: Consistency Via Safely Shared Resources
* Composability: More Than The Sum of the Parts