Recently I faced with problem of printing from the Linux server to the printer connected to the Windows PC via USB. So, here is a brief how to do it using CUPS.
1. Type http://localhost:631/ in your browser to open CUPS web interface and go to “Add new printer” page.
2. For device choose “Windows Printer via SAMBA”. If this options isn’t presented in the drop down list run following command as root:
ln -s `which smbspool` /usr/lib/cups/backend/smb
3. Device URI type in following format:
smb://win_user:win_pass@win_domen/win_PC/printer_name
4. Choose appropriate driver for your printer. I didn’t find my model in the list. So, I chose one from Generic:
Generic -> Generic PCL 6/PCL XL Printer Foomatic/pxlmono
For more information, please refer to OpenPrinting database.
See also:
Definitely, it’s difficult to find an appropriate name for the new company:
As the online marketplace becomes increasingly cluttered it is more important than ever to be memorable and to stand out. The name of your company is a critical factor in this.
Here is an brief article where you can find five steps to choose right name. Hope it may help somebody 
I like Perl and I use it every day. It’s cool to make a simple scripts in one line to do some routine work. For example, my first Perl oneliner formats Apache log to be easy readable. Here is another good example of Perl onliner (it isn’t my actually). It makes a recursive search and replacement:
Perl -p -i -e ‘s/oldstring/newstring/g’ `grep -ril oldstring *`
[via About: Perl]
PixelLetter is a service that prints out your mail in one of seven formats, and mailing it to the intended recipient on your behalf after charging you a minimal fee. It’s very useful if you don’t use post mail but your relatives or friends cannot read emails. This service is really needed in Russia where Internet doesn’t exists anywhere. Unfortunately, PixelLetter is currently limited to serving Germany only.
[via Ubergizmo]
Here is a new player in the web services battle – Eyejot. Eyejot is a web based email client which allows to create, send and receive video emails. It’s very easy to create the video email using your webcam.
Other features include: private delivery, permission-based address book, integrates with mobile devices, integrates with iTunes/RSS, connects to any camera. And finally, Eyejot team said that it supports Windows, Mac and Linux! so, try it and enjoy!
Recently I started to receive a lot of spam messages from contact form of my blog. It really makes me crazy! I hate spam and I hate spammers! Great plugin SpamKarma protects my posts but it doesn’t do anything with contact form. So, I googled it and found a patched version of Ryan Duff’s plugin. There is a customized question which helps to identify a human (2+2 by default). It can be changed easily via admin interface. Enjoy!
We use following approach to build print view of documents in our web-based application. At the begging the document template is filled by real data and HTML page is generated. After that this page is sent to HTMLDOC which converts it into PDF. The users open the document via Acrobat plugin installed in the web browser. This approach has worked fine for years.
But recently we decided to send PDF directly to the printer. I’ve added printer to the our server and implemented a simple function (we have a Xerox printer with PostScript support):
lp -d printer_name -o sides=two-sided-long-edge -o media=A4 -o portrait -o page-ranges=1-7 PDF_file
The strange thing appeared right after that. One type of documents couldn’t print anymore. No errors in the CUPS log or on the printer display. The job just disappeared from the queue and was marked as printed. After spending some time I found the way to solve this problem. I use acroread to convert PDF into PostScript and then send it to the printer:
acroread -toPostScript PDF_file
Acroread creates the PostScript file with the same name but with different extension (.ps) and stores it in the current directory. But you can pass desired directory name as second parameter:
acroread -toPostScript PDF_file /store-dir/
I use Acrobat 5 from DAG repository. It works fine even the server doesn’t have installed X. But if you want to use Acrobat 7 you should do additional work. It needs X and if try to run it from command line it give you an error:
(acroread:6488):
GTK-WARNING **: cannot open display:
To solve this just install Xvfb – X server that can run on machines with no display hardware and no physical input devices, and run following command:
xinit acroread -toPostScript PDF_file /store-dir/ — /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvfb :9 -ac
The builders of Gizmo Project have just unveiled Gizmo Call, which allows you to make phone calls from your browser, using a Flash-based mini-app. You get five minutes a day of free calls to any phone line, along with unlimited free calls to users of Google Talk, Windows Live, Gizmo Project and any other SIP service.
