Quick Hacks 8.1 II

Summary:

• 'printerdrake' Locks System Hard
• Poor Printing Quality In 8.1
• Configuring The Desktop Firewall
• Booting From ~LiLo Intermittently Fails
• Trouble Accessing Kodak Digital Cameras
• Standard Kernel Source Does Not Compile

Section index - KB index

'Quick Hacks 8.1' are a loose collection of work arounds, quick fixes and tips for Mandrake Linux 8.1. They are meant as a supplement to the official 8.1 errata page, not as a replacement.

You are invited to contribute your 'Quick Hacks'? as well1.1

'printerdrake' Locks System Hard

Problem:

On some mainboards, 'printerdrake' can lock up the system completely during printer detection.

Cause:

Unknown if kernel or 'printerdrake' related.

Solution:

"Turn off the automatic printer detection in printerdrake, and choose the printer model manually.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to turn off the auto-detection in printerdrake shipped with ML 8.1, so you need to replace the /usr/lib/libDrakX/printerdrake.pm file with a newer version.
At this moment, the new version of printerdrake.pm is available on linuxprinting.org. Download it, overwrite the old version with the new one, and your new printerdrake will offer you a possibility to skip auto-detection when setting up a local printer with it."
(Source: ~MandrakeForum)

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Poor Printing Quality In 8.1

Problem:

Printing quality on some printers under 8.1 appears to be worse than in 8.0 (if working at all).

Cause:

Wrong 'recommended driver' is chosen from the database when using 'printerdrake' in dumb mode.

Solution:

Use 'printerdrake' in 'Expert mode' to choose another printer driver, or update printer related package via unsupported/8.1/i586.

See this article on ~MandrakeForum for more detailed information and instructions.

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Configuring The Desktop Firewall

Problem:

You can't 'ping' a machine behind a firewalled machine. Furthermore services opened via the graphical configuration utility are not available to clients on the local network.

Cause:

The graphical configuration utility (Mandrake Control Center - Security - Firewalling) only configures 'public services' but not 'internal services' and furthermore lacks an option to configure the 'ping-ability'.

Solution:

Edit the configuration file of the firewall directly (as 'root'). The file is called '/etc/Bastille/bastille-firewall.cfg' and is well commented.
Keep in mind that in order for changes to this file to take effect, you'll have to restart the firewall (as 'root') with these commands:

service bastille-firewall stop<br> service bastille-firewall start

The options in question here are

TCP(UDP)_PUBLIC_SERVICES
TCP(UDP)_INTERNAL_SERVICES
ICMP_ALLOWED_TYPES

The first two allow you to determine which services or servers running on your machine will either be available for the internal network or for the external network or for both.
'Internal network' describes the machines in your local network (e.g. your wife's computer, your laptop etc) whereas 'external network' usually describes computers connected to the Internet.
By default all services and servers running on your machine are blocked to all other machines by the firewall. If you want to make them available either to local clients or to the Internet at large, you have to provide either the ports to be opened or the name of the service as options to one or both parameters.

Let's say you want to make access to your SSH server possible for local clients only:

TCP_INTERNAL_SERVICES="ssh"

would do the trick as would

TCP_INTERNAL_SERVICES="22"

since '/etc/services' lists port 22 as the one used by SSH (I prefer specifying the port). External computer remain blocked from the SSH server.
Notice that in order to provide a service to internal and external clients, you'll have to add that service to TCP_INTERNAL_SERVICES and TCP_PUBLIC_SERVICES.
In most cases opening the UDP port isn't necessary, although you might have to experiment here.

To allow your machine to be 'ping'ed' from other computers, you'll have to edit the options to ICMP_ALLOWED_TYPES. By default you can't 'ping' your firewalled machine from another.
To change this, you have to add a certain 'allowed type' ('echo-request') to this parameter in the configuration file:

ICMP_ALLOWED_TYPES="destination-unreachable echo-reply time-exceeded echo-request"

Now restart the firewall and you will now be able to ping your machine from everywhere else.

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Booting From ~LiLo Intermittently Fails

Problem:

Sometimes ~LiLo refuses to boot the kernel from the hard disk, displaying error messages like:

crc error

or

invalid compression format

Error messages usually only occur when dismissing the graphical boot menu with ESC and booting ~LiLo from the boot prompt.

Cause:

Unknown. These errors are usually attributed to bad media files or corrupt kernel images, but these do not apply to standard kernel images on hard disks. Maybe hardware related (Promise controllers).

Solution:

Use GRUB instead. Go to Mandrake Control Center: Boot - Boot Config. Click on 'Configure' button. Choose GRUB from the bootloader menu and click OK. You'll be presented with a configuration based on your old ~LiLo setup which should do in most cases.

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Trouble Accessing Kodak Digital Cameras

Problem: No access to Kodak digital cameras (like the DC3400), neither with gphoto 0.4 nor with gphoto2.

Cause:"Kernel 2.4.8 delivered with Mandrake Linux 8.1 fails to make a dc2xx device file in /dev/usb directory, which prevents gphoto 0.4 from working properly. On the other hand, the dc2xx modul which is needed to access this camera with gphoto 0.4 DOES get loaded, and prevents gphoto2 from working properly."

Solution: "Thus, if you have a Kodak camera, connect it to your PC using a USB cable, type

lsmod

rmmod dc2xx

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Standard Kernel Source Doesn't Compile

Problem: Compiling a kernel from the 8.1 standard kernel-source-2.4.8-26mdk inevitably fails with various errors (usually ATM related).

Cause: Unknown.

Solution: Before running the configuration process with 'make {x|menu}config', run this command:

make mrproper

Notice that this command will also delete the standard '.config' file from the kernel source root directory. However, there's a copy called '/boot/config-2.4.8-34.1mdk' which you can copy and rename to '.config' in order to have Mandrake's default kernel configuration as a template.

Next Item: Next Page Of Quick Hacks

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Related Resources:

Mandrake Linux 8.1 - Errata
MF: Printing In 8.1 (I)
MF: X In 8.1
MF: devfs In 8.1
MF: Installation Desktop 8.1
MF: Installation Laptop 8.1
MF: Sound In 8.1
MF: ISA ~PnP Cards In 8.1
MF: Printing In 8.1 (II)

Revision / Modified: Dec. 18, 2001
Author: Tom Berger

Legal: This page is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License. Standard disclaimers of warranty apply. Copyright LSTB and Mandrakesoft.