Archive for July, 2010

Revisited: Epson Perfection v350 on Ubuntu

13 years
by in Uncategorized

Jackie wanted me to reconfigure her scanner (since she hasn’t used it since I reloaded her system a while back) and I remembered what a pain it was to configure. A quick google search turned up the article I wrote three years ago, so I thought I’d do follow-up article to see what’s changed.

Get the Drivers

Since my last installation, things have changed. a bit. Many different distros are now supported, so we don’t have to shoehorn the RPMs onto the system with Alien. Here are the packages I grabbed off their site:

iscan-data_1.0.1-1_all.deb
iscan_2.25.0-1.ltdl7_i386.deb
iscan-plugin-gt-f700_2.1.0-3_i386.deb

Once you have them, you can install them along with sane and sane utils:

sudo dpkg -i iscan_2.25.0-1.ltdl7_i386.deb iscan-data_1.0.1-1_all.deb iscan-plugin-gt-f700_2.1.0-3_i386.deb
sudo apt-get install sane sane-utils

Edit the Configs

Edit /etc/sane.d/dll.conf, adding epkowa to the list.

Create /etc/udev/rules.d/45-libsane.rules, adding the following:

# Epson Perfection v350
SYSFS{idVendor}=="04b8", SYSFS{idProduct}=="012f", MODE="664", GROUP="scanner"

I use the group “scanner” above; You could go the easy route and use a group that you’re already part of, such as “users” or “admin”, otherwise you’ll have to create the scanner group, add yourself to it, then log out and log back in.

Finishing Up

Afterwards, connect your scanner and run the following command:

scanimage -L

The scanner should fire up now, which means you can use your newly installed iscan app to scan pictures.

Raw WinXP Virtualbox Partitions on a Thinkpad

13 years
by in Linux, Open Source, Work

New job, new laptop. Many utilities here are windows only, so it requires a bit of… effort… to get myself up and running efficiently. The solution to the windows problem is VirtualBox. I had set this up on my last laptop with little effort, but this time around required a bit more effort. Hopefully the instructions below will help others get up and running quickly.

Disclaimer– your laptop may catch on fire and explode (or worse) if you attempt this… or something.

We’ll be presuming that you’ve already resized your windows partition and have both a working Windows and Linux partition.

In Windows

Log into XP, grab MergeIDE.zip from Virtualbox’s site, extract and run it. It should be a quick flash and be done. (Note: I am not 100% sure this step is needed)

Create a new hardware profile and name it virtualbox. Make sure to set it as a choice during boot. Try rebooting into native windows once to ensure that it does offer you profile options.

In Linux

You’ll need the following packages installed (May differ for non-ubuntu systems):
mbr, virtualbox-ose, virtualbox-ose-qt

Create a stand-alone mbr file to use for booting (yes, you need the force flag):

install-mbr ~/.VirtualBox/WindowsXP.mbr --force

We’re presuming that your windows partition is /dev/sda1. In the below command, we are defining

  • a vmdk file (WindowsXP.vmdk)
  • which raw disk to read (/dev/sda)
  • which partition (1)
  • the new MBR file we just created

VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ~/.VirtualBox/WindowsXP.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1 -mbr ~/.VirtualBox/WindowsXP.mbr -relative -register

Note that you’ll need read/write access to that drive as your user, so you may want to figure out a cleaner/securer way to implement this, rather than adding your user to the disk group (which is very dumb and insecure). I would, but it’s working and I have more important things to do at the moment.

Another issue- apparently thinkpads report the drive heads and cylinders oddly (T410 for me and T60p in article), so we have to add some vmdk settings before virtualbox creates them incorrectly. Open ~/.VirtualBox/WindowsXP.vmdk and add the following at the bottom:

ddb.geometry.biosCylinders="1024"
ddb.geometry.biosHeads="240"
ddb.geometry.biosSectors="63"

The biosHeads appears to be the magic value- it seems to work if it’s set to 240, but the default is 255 (which fails).

Once you add those, start up virtualbox and check the virtual media manager, your new vmdk should be listed there. Once it’s confirmed, create a new virtual machine. Rather than creating a disk, select your vmdk as an existing disk.

After you finish, go the the VM settings->system and make sure the motherboard tab as io-apic  enabled (I also had PAE/NX enabled under processor and VT-x enabled under Acceleration).

Start the VM

There are several errors that could pop up. I’m sure there are plenty more that I stumbled across, but these were the two big ones:

  • a disk read error occurred, press ctrl+alt+del to restart – Caused by incorrect biosHeads- check and make sure it’s set to 240 (this was the fix for me, results may vary).
  • Complaint about kvm/vmx – Virtualbox does not like kvm. Uninstall qemu-kvm.

If things go well, it should flicker mbr in the corner, then go to the hardware profile selection screen. Select the virtualbox profile, and continue, then log in.

What follows is a half-hour of installing generic drivers and dealing with hardware specific auto start apps complaining that they won’t work on this installation. Windows will warn that the new drivers are not blessed, so be forewarned.

Once completed, at the top of the VM windows select Devices-> Install Guest Additions. This will download and mount an ISO, and windows will pop open a folder with the addition executables. Select the one best for you and run the installer. It will prompt you for video and mouse drivers (and trust me, you want them).

The final step is to shut down the windows VM, then reboot into the native windows partition to make sure it still works.  I did receive a few blue-screens before logging in at the beginning, but they appeared random and haven’t happened since.

And that’s all there is to it- simple, eh? Your windows partition should now run in native mode and vm mode.

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