How to install HP PSC 1410 printer on Precise Puppy Linux 5.7.1

After some hair pulling, I managed to get this printer installed. Below are the steps that I have taken:

1. Turn on and connect the printer to the puppy machine
2. Install hplip using puppy package manager. Run command "ppm" on terminal, and search for hplip.
3. Make sure all dependencies are installed
4. Launch cups by going to http://localhost:631
5. Go to "Administration -> Printer -> Add printer" OR "Administration -> Printer -> Find new printer"
6. Choose the printer with connection like "usb://HP/PSC%201400%20series?serial=CN5CDC60T004BM" with hplip in the name
7. For Driver, choose "HP PSC 1400 Series, hpcups 3.12.9 (color, 2-sided printing)"
8. Set default settings for the newly added printer by going to "Printer -> HP PSC 1410 -> Administration -> set default option". Print settings in application does not work.
9. You are done..... Congratulation :)

How to know if the machine you are working on are a VM

There are a few ways you can detect if the machine you are working on is a VM. Below are commands to use and the output if your machine is a VM:

1. Use dmidecode command, dmidecode is a tool for dumping a computer DMI (some say SMBIOS) table contents in a human-readable format. So if your machine is a vm, you should not get any output:

   [somebody@theserver ~]$ sudo dmidecode
    # dmidecode 2.10
    /dev/mem: mmap: Bad address

2. Try check on /proc/scsi/scsi, if it is a vm, you would not get any attached device:

   [somebody@theserver ~]$ cat /proc/scsi/scsi 
   Attached devices:

   
   
3. Use lspci and see if there is any virtual related devices:

   [somebody@theserver ~]$ /sbin/lspci 
   00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440FX - 82441FX PMC [Natoma] (rev 02)
   00:01.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 ISA [Natoma/Triton II]
   00:01.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 IDE [Natoma/Triton II]
   00:01.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82371SB PIIX3 USB [Natoma/Triton II] (rev 01)
   00:01.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 03)
   00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Cirrus Logic GD 5446
   00:03.0 Ethernet controller: Red Hat, Inc Virtio network device
   00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Red Hat, Inc Virtio network device
   00:05.0 SCSI storage controller: Red Hat, Inc Virtio block device
   00:06.0 RAM memory: Red Hat, Inc Virtio memory balloon
   00:07.0 SCSI storage controller: Red Hat, Inc Virtio block device

4. Check on your network interface:

   [somebody@theserver ~]$ /sbin/ethtool -i eth0
   driver: virtio_net
   version: 
   firmware-version: 
   bus-info: virtio0

5. Use dmesg and search for word virt, KVM, vmware, xen:

   [somebody@theserver ~]$ dmesg | grep -i vir
   Booting paravirtualized kernel on KVM
   CPU0: Intel QEMU Virtual CPU version (cpu64-rhel6) stepping 03
   input: Macintosh mouse button emulation as /devices/virtual/input/input1
   virtio-pci 0000:00:03.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKC] -> GSI 10 (level, high) -> IRQ 10
   virtio-pci 0000:00:04.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKD] -> GSI 11 (level, high) -> IRQ 11
   virtio-pci 0000:00:05.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKA] -> GSI 10 (level, high) -> IRQ
   

   [somebody@theserver2:~]$ dmesg | grep -i -e virt
   [    0.000000] Booting paravirtualized kernel on Xen
   [    0.102602] input: Macintosh mouse button emulation as /devices/virtual/input/input0
   [    3.577404] Initialising Xen virtual ethernet driver

   
   

Checking hardisk information on linux

To check hardisk information such as model and serial number, there are a few useful commands like hdparm, sdparm and fdisk.

To check the information about first hardisk for PATA and SATA hardisk:

# hdparm -i /dev/sda

For SCSI disk, a different command is to be used:

# sdparm /dev/sda

To check the hardisk capacity and partitions contained in the hardisk, fdisk can be used:

# fdisk -lu /dev/sda

If your hardisk is smart compatible, you can refer here on how to install and use smart to find information and monitor the health of your hardisk.

Hyper terminal for linux

For people that manage hardware devices such as storage, routers and many more using Microsoft Windows, the term hyper terminal is a familiar thing. They use hyper terminal to connect to all the devices mentioned above using serial cable. But what if you have to manage all those devices using linux?

The answer is, linux has 2 alternatives to hyper terminal; one is command line based and the other is GUI based. Let me start with the command line tool first. It is called minicom. You can install this tool using package manager of your linux machine. In fedora/redhat/centos:

# yum install minicom

Running it for the first time requires you to do some settings by running below command as root:

# minicom -s

Picture below shows the screen after command minicom -s


This is where you set the baudrate, serial device you want to use etc. After finish with the setting, save it so that you do not have to do it every time. You can save it to default .dfl file, with the name of .minirc.dfl in your home folder, or you can specify the name and location yourselves. To change the saved setting, just use the above command back.

The second tool is called cutecom, a graphical serial terminal. To install it on fedora,centos or redhat:

# yum install cutecom

It is easier to use since it has GUI. Picture below shows cutecom main screen, where you can set your device, parity, baudrate etc.

Unmounting busy device

You have an external drive attached to your linux machine. Then after finishing all your job, you try to unmount it, a message come out saying the device is busy.

# umount /media/disk
umount: /media/disk: device is busy
umount: /media/disk: device is busy

So what could possibly the cause?

1. You are inside the disk. Check your working directory using pwd

# pwd
/media/disk

2. Some files are accessing the disk. Check list of open files using lsof

# lsof | grep /media/disk

3. Some processes areaccessing the disk. Use fuser to check

# fuser -m /media/disk

What to do?

1. For case 1, just go to another directory

# cd
# umount /media/disk

2. For case 2, check the files that are accessing the disk and kill it

# lsof | grep "/media/disk"
vim 2693 pingu cwd DIR 8,4 4096 73729 /media/disk
# kill -9 2693
# umount /media/disk

3. For case 3, find the process that accessing the disk and kill it

# fuser -m /media/disk
/media/disk: 2693
# ps -e | grep 2693
2693 pts/0 00:00:00 vim
# kill -9 2693
# umount /media/disk

4. For case no 3 also, you can use fuser -k to kill the process that bugging the disk directly (Thanx to mr. linuxmalaysia for the comment)

# fuser -k /media/disk
#umount /media/disk


Hope this will be useful

Knowing your hardware

In linux, there are a few ways that you can know you hardware details without opening the chassis of your machine. Below are a few ways that I know and hopefully can help linux users out there;

1. Refer to the /proc directory. This directory contains a few files that can give you information about your hardware such as memory (meminfo), processor (cpuinfo), partitions (partition) and many more
2. Use "lspci" command. This is a command to list all pci devices connected to your machine
3. Use "lshw" command. This command will list out all hardware installed on your system. Available in ubuntu
4. Use "kudzu -p" command. This is redhat/centos hardware probing and installing tool. Use "kudzu -p" to display all the hardware connected to the system
   
5. Use "dmidecode" command. This is a tool for dumping bios information into human readable form
6. Run "lsusb" to list out all usb devices. Thanks to KwangErn Liew for the suggestion in the comment.
   

If anyone have any tool that I didn't list out, please feel free to drop out a comment