On my Ubuntu 13.04 installation, I have had trouble getting the touchpad to work. The driver just wouldn’t install. I finally figured it out.
Installing Brother Scanner Driver
I have an old article about installing the scanner driver for our Brother MFC 8840D Fax/Scanner/Copier/Printer. That was when things were simpler. Brother hasn’t kept up to date on their drivers, so I am updating this article.
Downloading
I downloaded the driver from Brother’s Website. Mine uses the brscan driver, not the brscan2. You can tell which one to use based on the model number listed on the download page.
Installing
I tried to install with the Ubuntu Software Center. It gives you some error messages when you do that. The official instructions say that you are supposed to install it like this:
sudo dpkg --force-all -i brscan-0.2.4-0.amd64.deb
I added my printer using this command:
brsaneconfig -a name=BrotherScanner model="MFC-8840D" ip=192.168.168.168
To make sure that it installed, look at the bottom of the output of this command:
brsaneconfig -q
Now, after all of that, it wouldn’t work. Come to find out, it puts the library files in the wrong directory. Thanks to Chargen, I found an easy fix:
for driver in /usr/lib64/sane/*; do sudo ln -s $driver /usr/lib/sane/$(basename $driver); done
And, run this one, too.
for lib in /usr/lib64/libbrscandec.so*; do sudo ln -s $lib /usr/lib/$(basename $lib); done
That fixed the problem!
Resources
Synthesizing an Accapella Song with Festival Speech Synthesis
I have played with Festival before. It will easily generate speech from written commands. It seems pretty full featured. But, I have always wanted to add pitch. Could I make it sing the words?
Making Git Ignore File Permissions
I found a cool little trick today. The file permissions are making git think that the file changed. There is a simple command that tells it to ignore those changes:
git config core.filemode false
Trying Brackets
A while ago, I ran across the brackets development environment. It looked really awesome, particularly the part about dynamically updating the page as you edit it. When I first heard about it, the Linux version was not quite out yet. Now, they have a package and everything for easy installation. So, here’s a first post about what I found.
Ubuntu 13.04 Installing Office
This article describes where I stand on using Microsoft Office in Linux. This time, I tried to explore a little more, so I walk you through what I tried and what didn’t work.
Jelly Bean Android ROMs
This is more of a public bookmark than anything else. I have been trying several different ROMs, but each on seems slow and laggy. I am not sure if am doing something wrong or if the HD2 is nearing the end of its life.
As always, the best place to find the most recent ROMs is: android.hd2roms.com
Here are the ROMS that I was looking at:
Dell 1320c Laser Printer on Ubuntu 13.04
I have long wanted to get my office’s color printer working, and I think that I finally found it. The printer is a Dell 1320c and to make it a little more challenging, it’s hooked to a LinkSys PSUS4 Print Server so as to make it a network printer. Others are using it from their Windows computers in the office, but this is the first time anyone has tried with a Linux computer.
Here’s what I found…
Amazon Prime Fix Again
We have enjoyed watching many of the Amazon Prime videos in the past. Unfortunately, on the last few machines that I have rebuilt, they wouldn’t play. It just said to upgrade the Flash Player. The usual tricks didn’t work.
Update: I found a different but easier solution for Ubuntu 13.10. See this post.
Thanks to Ask Ubuntu and Aaron, I found the solution. In summary, here are the commands that got the job done:
sudo apt-get install hal sudo mkdir /etc/hal/fdi/preprobe sudo mkdir /etc/hal/fdi/information /usr/sbin/hald --daemon=yes --verbose=yes rm -rf ~/.adobe
Here are the steps…
Cache Tuning for Inodes
I have been struggling with my website’s backups running. Host Gator requires the Inode count to be under a certain level in order for the backups to run. The best part about it is that they have added tools to the CPanel to show the usage and backup status.
After fixing the problem, here’s what my backup status panel looks like:
Also, farther on down the left hand column, Host Gator offers an Inode measurement. Again, after fixing, here’s what mine looks like:
Last time, I messed with the git repositories to clean up some of the inode usage. This time, I looked into the WordPress Caching. I am using a cache plugin called W3 Total Cache. Because it was not configured correctly, it was using up more inodes than it should have.
So, it was time to check on performance again, and I wanted to do a before and after performance measurement.