LaCie 500 network disk..mounting under linux

Another nice piece of hardware is a network disk. You can find quite a lot of them out there and this manipulation will work for any brand, disks.

What we want is that this network disk to be mounted each time that we boot ubuntu under a comfy folder in the home of our user without anything invading our workflow (ie having to configure instead of working).

1. Under the shortcuts menu enter into "personal folder" and then create a folder "network_disk" (for example)
   
2. Open a terminal (applications/accessories/terminal
3. type : su
   
4. then enter your root password
5. type : gedit /etc/fstab

At the end of the file type that :
//ip_of_your_networkdisk/sharename /home/yourcurentusername/folderyoucreated in point1 cifs iocharset=utf8,rw,username=xxxx,password=xxx,umask=0002,uid=yourcurrentusername, group=users 0 0

6. exit gedit you should come back into the terminal
7. type "mount -a" it should mount into the folder (and now everytime you boot):
some explanations :

sharename : the name of the sare you created in the network disk administrative interface (in Lacie you have to do that)
username=xxx
password= xxx : those are the uname/password in the LaCie disk
iocharset=utf8 : for the nasty foreigners in case your accents are not recognized
rw : read and write (yeeah !)
umask= 0002 00 : means that this is good of all files even the ones under the root folder !
uid : means that your current username will have access to that mount point (otherwise only root can write !)
group : users (it's the current user groups)

easy !

More details on the available options on Wickipedia entry on fstab

Installing an HP C4472 under Ubuntu 8.04

I am a nice user of this printer since yesterday (Dell printers are a paperweight under linux...) and I can assure you that this printer (the HP 4400 serie) is fully functionnal. By fully I mean :

• I can scan
• I can print (mind you)
• The multi-card reader works flawlessly -and way faster than the Dell one..

When you buy it, there is still the thrill..(ok you're not here for that) so by default under Ubuntu 8.04 it will print and read the memory cards from his slot.

The only thing that won't work out of the box is the scan function (xsane or Kooka won't find anything).

So what we do is simply download and install the missing components; those aren't listed in the "add remove...". The whole manipulation is very easy. Remember the root password trick ? ok we gonna need that.

1. Open a terminal (application/accessories/terminal)
2. type "su" then enter the root password
3. type : apt-get install hplip
4. Then follow directions
5. type : apt-get install hpijs
6. Then follow directions

There are quite a lot of HP functions for linux (hpoj,hpoj-xojpanel,hplip,hpijs,hplip-gui) but you should need only hplip and hpijs for the scanner to work

Enabling root password in Ubuntu

what a nice system indeed...the only annoying thing is that by default the root user don't have any password (ikes...but btw the root got logon deny..)

Ok so we need the root password to do a variety of things (ie configuring things).

1. boot as usual under ubuntu
2. open a shell terminal (applications/accessories) should be the last entry
3. type the following thing :
sudo passwd root
4. it will asks for your password then it will asks you to setup a root password

Voilà now everything is setted and you can, without any problem do a "su" command (it will asks for a pwd..the one you setted in point 4)