So no meetings for a while. No Pi no Linux.
I have been lazy during the "Covid Shelter" All this time to work on personal
projects and I have just streamed Star Trek [ Picard was a letdown, but I like
"The Orville" ]
But last week I violated the "Order" and went to my friend's place to help with
a printer. It's a Brother Laser printer with Wifi. But it keeps disconnecting .
So my idea was to use a Raspberry Pi for a printserver. Maybe the Pi can stay
on the Wifi.
So way back in the day I had a little device called Nslu2 (My fondness for
little Linux devices is not new)
It ran Linux and you could modify the OS to allow installing extra software.
In those days finding print drivers for Linux was much harder. Even much more
so if the architecture wasn't x86. So for that Nslu2 I installed a printserver but not
Cups. p190nd
p190nd is a very minimal printserver. It shares raw printer on IPP (Jetdirect)
protocol. Port 1900. So with this the server doesn't need to have drivers just the
clients need drivers.
Turns out Brother support site has Linux driver and it actually includes Arm support.
So I could have had the printer working on the PI. (Also you can add raw printer on
Cups and share via IPP)
I wasn't sure it was going to work as in Raspbian Stretch the USB to lp driver is missing
and so requires extra steps but seems to be included in Buster.
In Buster connect the printer by USB and you see created /dev/usb/lp0
Steps:
Download Raspbian Buster Lite.
Write to sd card
Create empty file called ssh in the boot partition of the sd card.
Create file wpa_supplicant.conf in the boot partition with your WIFI details
Boot up the Pi
ssh pi@raspberrypi.local [or with the ip address for the Pi which you find in your
router - Ubuntu can connect to .local ] password "raspberry"
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo reboot
ssh again
connect printer by USB and verify /dev/usb/lp0
sudo apt install p190nd
edit p910nd config file, /etc/default/p910nd,
P910ND_OPTS="-f /dev/usb/lp0"
P910ND_START=1
sudo service p910nd restart
Buster already has usb lp enabled so most of the steps can be skipped.
Prelim Announcement: Virtual Berkeley Pi and or Linux meeting. I played around with
Jitsi video conferencing (mentioned by Rick Moen, previously) And it looks like we can
use it. Open source and free meet up hosting server. It can run from a web browser
using the camera and mic on your laptop. Or remain anonymous and just view.
I tested today with Firefox and Google chrome. So lets say next Sunday noon til
whenever. I'll finalize this week and provide details to the list.
Thomas