Using xsane with a Canon CanoScan LiDE 60 on Debian Etch

I got an inexpensive flatbed USB scanner and was disappointed with the bundled (Windows-only) software, so I tried it on Linux. Debian Etch installs xsane by default, but it would not recognize the scanner. I tried a whole bunch of things but nothing help, until I accidentally started xsane from a root terminal, and it “just worked”, despite the warning from xsane about running as root.

Resuming an HTTP download with Curl

I had to download an ISO image to test some new firewall software and it got interrupted halfway through. Fortunately, curl has a way to continue from where you left out with the “-C -” option. A full command line looks like:

curl -C – –compressed –output disk.iso http://example/download/disk.iso